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A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR.  The  Autobiography  of 
Wilfred  Thomason  Grenfell.     Illustrated. 

LABRADOR  DAYS.  Tales  of  the  Sea  Toilers. 
With  frontispiece. 

TALES  OF  THE  LABRADOR.  With  frontispiece. 

THE  ADVENTURE  OF   LIFE. 

ADRIFT  ON  AN   ICE-PAN.     Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

THE  AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF 
WILFRED  THOMASON  GRENFELL 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

Open  Knowledge  Commons 


http://www.archive.org/details/labradordoctoraOOgren 


A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

THE  AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF 
Wn^FRED  THOMASON  GRENFELL 

M.D.  (OXON.),  C.M.G. 
WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 

I.  Early  Days  1 

II.  School  Life  15 

III.  Early  Work  in  London  37 

IV.  At  the  London  Hospital  64 
V.  North  Sea  Work  99 

VI.  The  Lure  of  the  Labrador  119 

VII.  The  People  of  Labrador  139 

VIII.  Lecturing  and  Cruising  159 

IX.  The  Seal  Fishery  171 

X.  Three  Years'  Work  in  the  British  Isles         183 

XI.  First  Winter  at  St.  Anthony  197 

XII.  The  Cooperative  Movement  215 

XIII.  The  Mill  and  the  Fox  Farm  226 

XIV.  The  Children's  Home  241 
XV.  Problems  of  Education  254 

XVI.  "Who  HATH  DESIRED  the  Sea?"  270 

XVII.  The  Reindeer  Experiment  288 

XVIII.  The  Ice-Pan  Adventure  304 

XIX.  They  that  do  Business  in  Great  Waters         315 

XX.  Marriage  331 

XXI.  New  Ventures  344 

XXII.  Problems  on  Land  and  Sea  357 

XXIII.  A  Month's  Holiday  in  Asl^  Minor  376 

XXIV.  The  War  384 
XXV.  Forward  Steps  403 

XXVI.  The  Future  of  the  Mission  411 

XXVII.  My  Religious  Life  424 

Index  435 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Wilfred  Thomason  Grenfell  Frontispiece 

View  from  Mostyn  House,  the  Author's  Birthplace, 

Parkgate,  Cheshire  2 

Oxford  University  Rugby  Union  Football  Team  44 

The  Labrador  Coast  120 

Eskimo  Woman  and  Baby  128 

Eskimo  Man  128 

Eskimo  Girls  132 

Battle  Harbour  140 

A  Labrador  Burial  156 

The  Labrador  Doctor  in  Summer  164 

The  Strathcona  192 

Three  of  the  Doctor's  Dogs  198 

A  Komatik  Journey  202 

The  First  Cooperative  Store  218 

St.  Anthony  226 

Inside  the  Orphanage  250 

Fish  on  the  Flakes  272 

Drying  the  Seines  272 

A  Part  of  the  Reindeer  Herd  296 

Reindeer  Teams  meeting  a  Dog  Team  296 

A  Spring  Scene  at  St.  Anthony  304 

Dog  Race  at  St.  Anthony  304 

Icebergs  320 

Commodore  Peary  on  his  Way  back  from  the  Pole, 

1909  340 

The  Institute,  St.  John's  354 

Dog  Travel  368 

The  Labrador  Doctor  in  Winter  406 

Entrance  to  St.  Anthony  Harbour  418 


A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

CHAPTER  I 

EARLY  DAYS 

To  be  born  on  the  28th  of  February  is  not  altogether 
without  its  compensations.  It  affords  a  subject  of  con- 
versation when  you  are  asked  to  put  your  name  in  birth- 
day books.  It  is  evident  that  many  people  suppose  it  to 
be  almost  an  intrusion  to  appear  on  that  day.  However, 
it  was  perfectly  satisfactory  to  me  so  long  as  it  was  not 
the  29th.  As  a  boy,  that  was  all  for  which  I  cared.  Still, 
I  used  at  times  to  be  oppressed  by  the  danger,  so  nar- 
rowly missed,  of  growing  up  with  undue  deliberation. 

The  event  occurred  in  1865  in  Parkgate,  near  Chester, 
England,  whither  my  parents  had  moved  to  enable  my 
father  to  take  over  the  school  of  his  uncle.  I  was  always 
told  that  what  might  be  called  boisterous  weather  sig- 
nalled my  arrival.  Experience  has  since  shown  me  that 
that  need  not  be  considered  a  particularly  ominous 
portent  in  the  winter  season  on  the  Sands  of  Dee. 

It  is  fortunate  that  the  selection  of  our  birthplace  is 
not  left  to  ourselves.  It  would  most  certainly  be  one  of 
those  small  decisions  which  would  later  add  to  the  things 
over  which  we  worry.  I  can  see  how  it  would  have  acted 
in  my  own  case.  For  my  paternal  forbears  are  really  of 
Cornish  extraction  —  a  corner  of  our  little  Island  to 
which  attaches  all  the  romantic  aroma  of  the  men,  who, 
in  defence  of  England,  "swept  the  Spanish  Main,"  and 
so  long  successfully  singed  the  King  of  Spain's  beard, 
men  whose  exploits  never  fail  to  stir  the  best  blood  of 
Englishmen,  and  among  whom  my  direct  ancestors  had 


2  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

the  privilege  of  playing  no  undistinguished  part.  On  the 
other  hand,  my  visits  thither  have  —  romance  aside  — 
convinced  me  that  the  restricted  foreshore  and  the  pre- 
cipitous cliffs  are  a  handicap  to  the  development  of 
youth,  compared  with  the  broad  expanses  of  tempting 
sands,  which  are  after  all  associated  with  another  kins- 
man, whose  songs  have  helped  to  make  them  famous, 
Charles  Kingsley. 

My  mother  was  born  in  India,  her  father  being  a 
colonel  of  many  campaigns,  and  her  brother  an  engineer 
officer  in  charge  during  the  siege  of  Lucknow  till  relieved 
by  Sir  Henry  Havelock.  At  the  first  Delhi  Durbar  no 
less  than  forty-eight  of  my  cousins  met,  all  being  officers 
either  of  the  Indian  military  or  civil  service. 

To  the  modern  progressive  mind  the  wide  sands  are  a 
stumbling-block.  Silting  up  with  the  years,  they  have 
closed  the  river  to  navigation,  and  converted  our  once 
famous  Roman  city  of  Chester  into  a  sleepy,  second-rate 
market-town.  The  great  flood  of  commerce  from  the 
New  World  sweeps  contemptuously  past  our  estuary, 
and  finds  its  clearing-house  under  the  eternal,  assertive 
smoke  clouds  which  camouflage  the  miles  of  throbbing 
docks  and  slums  called  Liverpool  —  little  more  than  a 
dozen  miles  distant.  But  the  heather-clad  hills  of  Heswall, 
and  the  old  red  sandstone  ridge,  which  form  the  ancient 
borough  of  the  "Hundred  of  Wirral,"  afford  an  efficient 
shelter  from  the  insistent  taint  of  out-of-the-worldness. 

Every  inch  of  the  Sands  of  Dee  were  dear  to  me.  I 
learned  to  know  their  every  bank  and  gutter.  Away 
beyond  them  there  was  a  mystery  in  the  blue  hills  of  the 
Welsh  shore,  only  cut  off  from  us  children  in  reality  by 
the  narrow,  rapid  water  of  the  channel  we  called  the 
Deep.  Yet  they  seemed  so  high  and  so  far  away.  The 
people  there  spoke  a  different  language  from  ours,  and 


EARLY  DAYS  3 

all  their  instincts  seemed  diverse.  Our  humble  neighbours 
lived  by  the  seafaring  genius  which  we  ourselves  loved 
so  much.  They  made  their  living  from  the  fisheries  of  the 
river  mouth;  and  scores  of  times  we  children  would  slip 
away,  and  spend  the  day  and  night  with  them  in  their 
boats. 

While  I  was  still  quite  a  small  boy,  a  terrible  blizzard 
struck  the  estuary  while  the  boats  were  out,  and  for 
twenty-four  hours  one  of  the  fishing  craft  was  missing. 
Only  a  lad  of  sixteen  was  in  charge  of  her  —  a  boy  whom, 
we  knew,  and  with  whom  we  had  often  sailed.  All  my 
family  were  away  from  home  at  the  time  except  myself; 
and  I  can  still  remember  the  thrill  I  experienced  when, 
as  representative  of  the  "  Big  House,"  I  was  taken  to  see 
the  poor  lad,  who  had  been  brought  home  at  last,  frozen 
to  death. 

The  men  of  the  opposite  shores  were  shopkeepers  and 
miners.  Somehow  we  knew  that  they  could  n't  help  it. 
The  nursery  rhyme  about  "Taffy  was  a  Welshman; 
Taffy  was  a  thief,"  because  familiar,  had  not  led  us  to 
hold  any  unduly  inflated  estimate  of  the  Welsh  character. 
One  of  my  old  nurses  did  much  to  redeem  it,  however. 
She  had  undertaken  the  burden  of  my  brother  and  my- 
self during  a  long  vacation,  and  carried  us  off  bodily  to 
her  home  in  Wales.  Her  clean  little  cottage  stood  by  the 
side  of  a  road  leading  to  the  village  school  of  the  State 
Mining  District  of  Festiniog.  We  soon  learned  that  the 
local  boys  resented  the  intrusion  of  the  two  English  lads, 
and  they  so  frequently  chased  us  off  the  village  green, 
which  was  the  only  playground  offered  us,  that  we  at 
last  decided  to  give  battle.  We  had  stored  up  a  pile  of 
slates  behind  our  garden  wall,  and  luring  the  enemy  to 
the  gates  by  the  simple  method  of  retiring  before  their 
advance,  we  saluted  them  with  artillery  fire  from  a 


4  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

comparatively  safe  entrenchment.  To  my  horror,  one  of 
the  first  missiles  struck  a  medium-sized  boy  right  over 
the  eye,  and  I  saw  the  blood  flow  instantly.  The  awful 
comparison  of  David  and  Goliath  flashed  across  my 
terror-stricken  mind,  and  I  fled  incontinently  to  my 
nurse's  protection.  Subsequently  by  her  adroit  diplo- 
macy, we  were  not  only  delivered  from  justice,  but  gained 
the  freedom  of  the  green  as  well. 

Far  away  up  the  river  came  the  great  salt-water 
marshes  which  seemed  so  endless  to  our  tiny  selves. 
There  was  also  the  Great  Cop,  an  embankment  miles 
long,  intended  to  reach  "from  England  to  Wales,"  but 
which  was  never  finished  because  the  quicksand  swallowed 
up  all  that  the  workmen  could  pour  into  it.  Many  a  time 
I  have  stood  on  the  broken  end,  where  the  discouraged 
labourers  had  left  their  very  shovels  and  picks  and 
trucks  and  had  apparently  fled  in  dismay,  as  if  con- 
victed of  the  impiousness  of  trying  to  fill  the  Bottomless 
Pit.  To  my  childish  imagination  the  upturned  wheel- 
barrows and  wasted  trucks  and  rails  always  suggested 
the  banks  of  the  Red  Sea  after  the  awful  disaster  had 
swept  over  Pharoah  and  his  host.  How  the  returning 
tide  used  to  sweep  through  that  to  us  fathomless  gulch! 
It  made  the  old  river  seem  ever  so  much  more  wonderful, 
and  ever  so  much  more  filled  with  adventure. 

Many  a  time,  just  to  dare  it,  I  would  dive  into  the 
very  cauldron,  and  let  the  swirling  current  carry  me  to 
the  grassy  sward  beyond  —  along  which  I  would  run 
till  the  narrowing  channel  permitted  my  crossing  to  the 
Great  Cop  again.  I  would  be  drying  myself  in  the  sun- 
shine as  I  went,  and  all  ready  for  my  scanty  garments 
when  I  reached  my  clothing  once  more. 

Then  came  the  great  days  when  the  heavy  nor' westers 
howled  over  the  Sands  —  our  sea-front  was  exposed  to 


EARLY  DAYS  5 

all  the  power  of  the  sea  right  away  to  the  Point  of  Ayr  — 
the  days  when  they  came  in  with  big  spring  tides,  when 
we  saw  the  fishermen  doubling  their  anchors,  and  care- 
fully overhauling  the  holding  gear  of  their  boats,  before 
the  flooding  tide  drove  them  ashore,  powerless  to  do 
more  than  watch  them  battling  at  their  moorings  like 
living  things  —  the  possessions  upon  which  their  very 
bread  depended.  And  then  this  one  would  sink,  and  an- 
other would  part  her  cable  and  come  hurtling  before 
the  gale,  until  she  crashed  right  into  the  great  upright 
blocks  of  sandstone  which,  riveted  with  iron  bands  to 
their  copings,  were  relied  upon  to  hold  the  main  road 
from  destruction.  Sometimes  in  fragments,  and  some- 
times almost  entire,  the  craft  would  be  slung  clean  over 
the  torturing  battlements,  and  be  left  stranded  high  and 
dry  on  our  one  village  street,  a  menace  to  traffic,  but  a 
huge  joy  to  us  children. 

The  fascination  of  the  Sands  was  greatly  enhanced  by 
the  numerous  birds  which  at  all  times  frequented  them, 
in  search  of  the  abundant  food  which  lay  buried  along 
the  edges  of  the  muddy  gutters.  There  were  thousands 
of  sandpipers  in  enormous  flocks,  mixed  with  king 
plovers,  dunlins,  and  turnstones,  which  followed  the  ebb 
tides,  and  returned  again  in  whirling  clouds  before  the 
oncoming  floods.  Black-and-white  oyster-catchers  were 
always  to  be  found  chattering  over  the  great  mussel 
patches  at  low  water.  With  their  reddish  bills,  what  a 
trophy  a  bunch  of  them  made  as  we  bore  them  proudly 
home  over  our  shoulders!  Then  there  were  the  big  long- 
billed  curlews.  What  a  triumph  when  one  outwitted 
them!  One  of  my  clearest  recollections  is  discovering  a 
place  to  which  they  were  flighting  at  night  by  the  water's 
edge;  how,  having  no  dog,  I  swam  out  for  bird  after  bird 
as  they  fell  to  my  gun  —  shooting  some  before  I  had 


6  A  LABHADOR  DOCTOR 

even  time  to  put  on  my  shirt  again;  and  my  consequent 
blue-black  shoulder,  which  had  to  be  carefully  hidden 
next  day.  There  were  wild  ducks,  too,  to  be  surprised  in 
the  pools  of  the  big  salt  marshes. 

From  daylight  to  dark  I  would  wander,  quite  alone, 
over  endless  miles,  entirely  satisfied  to  come  back  with 
a  single  bird,  and  not  in  the  least  disheartened  if  I  got 
none.  All  sense  of  time  used  to  be  lost,  and  often  enough 
the  sandwich  and  biscuit  for  lunch  forgotten,  so  that  I 
would  be  forced  occasionally  to  resort  to  a  solitary  public 
house  near  a  colliery  on  our  side  of  the  water,  for  "tea- 
biscuits,"  all  that  they  offered,  except  endless  beer  for  the 
miners.  I  can  even  remember,  when  very  hard  driven, 
crossing  to  the  Welsh  side  for  bread  and  cheese. 

These  expeditions  were  made  barefoot  as  long  as  the 
cold  was  not  too  great.  A  diary  that  I  assayed  to  keep  in 
my  eighth  year  reminds  me  that  on  my  birthday,  five 
miles  from  home  in  the  marshes,  I  fell  head  over  heels 
into  a  deep  hole,  while  wading  out,  gun  in  hand,  after 
some  oyster-catchers  which  I  had  shot.  The  snow  was 
still  deep  on  the  countryside,  and  the  long  trot  home  has 
never  been  quite  forgotten.  My  grief,  however,  was  all 
for  the  gun.  There  was  always  the  joy  of  venture  in  those 
dear  old  Sands.  The  channels  cut  in  them  by  the  flowing 
tides  ran  deep,  and  often  intersected.  Moreover,  they 
changed  with  the  varying  storms.  The  rapidly  rising 
tide,  which  sent  a  bore  up  the  main  channel  as  far  as 
Chester,  twelve  miles  above  us,  filled  first  of  all  these 
treacherous  waterways,  quite  silently,  and  often  unob- 
served. To  us,  taught  to  be  as  much  at  home  in  the  water 
as  on  the  land,  they  only  added  spice  to  our  wanderings. 
They  were  nowhere  very  wide,  so  by  keeping  one's  head, 
and  being  able  to  swim,  only  our  clothes  suffered  by  it, 
and  they,  being  built  for  that  purpose,  did  not  complain. 


EARLY  DAYS  7 

One  day,  however,  I  remember  great  excitement.  The 
tide  had  risen  rapidly  in  the  channel  along  the  parade 
front,  and  the  shrimp  fishermen,  who  used  push-nets  in 
the  channels  at  low  tide,  had  returned  without  noticing 
that  one  of  their  number  was  missing.  Word  got  about 
just  too  late,  and  already  there  was  half  a  mile  of  water, 
beyond  which,  through  our  telescopes,  we  could  see  the 
poor  fellow  making  frantic  signals  to  the  shore.  There 
was  no  boat  out  there,  and  a  big  bank  intervening,  there 
seemed  no  way  to  get  to  him.  Watching  through  our 
glasses,  we  saw  him  drive  the  long  handle  of  his  net  deep 
into  the  sand,  and  cling  to  it,  while  the  tide  rose  speedily 
around  him.  Meanwhile  a  whole  bevy  of  his  mates  had 
rowed  out  to  the  bank,  and  were  literally  carrying  over 
its  treacherous  surface  one  of  their  clumsy  and  heavy 
fishing  punts.  It  was  a  veritable  race  for  life;  and  never 
have  I  watched  one  with  keener  excitement.  We  actually 
saw  his  post  give  way,  and  wash  downstream  with  him 
clinging  to  it,  just  before  his  friends  got  near.  Fortu- 
nately, drifting  with  the  spar,  he  again  found  bottom,  and 
was  eventually  rescued,  half  full  of  salt  water.  I  remem- 
ber how  he  fell  in  my  estimation  as  a  seaman  —  though 
I  was  only  a  boy  at  the  time. 

There  were  four  of  us  boys  in  all,  of  whom  I  was  the 
second.  My  next  brother  Maurice  died  when  he  was  only 
seven,  and  the  fourth,  Cecil,  being  five  years  younger 
than  I,  left  my  brother  Algernon  and  myself  as  the 
only  real  companions  for  each  other.  Moreover,  an  un- 
toward accident,  of  which  I  was  the  unwitting  cause,  left 
my  younger  brother  unable  to  share  our  play  for  many 
years.  Having  no  sisters,  and  scarcely  any  boy  friends, 
in  the  holidays,  when  all  the  boys  in  the  school  went 
home,  it  might  be  supposed  that  my  elder  brother  and 
I  were  much  thrown  together.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact 


8  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

such  was  not  the  case,  for  our  temperaments  being  en- 
tirely dififerent,  and  neither  of  us  having  any  idea  of 
giving  way  to  the  other,  we  seldom  or  ever  found  our 
pleasures  together.  And  yet  most  of  the  worst  scrapes 
into  which  we  fell  were  cooperative  affairs.  Though  I 
am  only  anxious  to  shoulder  my  share  of  the  responsi- 
bility in  the  escapades,  as  well  as  in  every  other  line  of 
life,  my  brother  Algernon  possessed  any  genius  to  which 
the  family  could  lay  claim,  in  that  as  in  every  other  line. 
He  was  my  father  over  again,  while  I  was  a  second 
edition  of  my  mother.  Father  was  waiting  to  get  into 
the  sixth  form  at  Rugby  when  he  was  only  thirteen  years 
old.  He  was  a  brilliant  scholar  at  Balliol,  but  had  been 
compelled  to  give  up  study  and  leave  the  University 
temporarily  owing  to  brain  trouble.  He  never  published 
anything,  but  would  reel  off  brilliant  short  poems  or 
essays  for  friends  at  a  moment's  notice.  I  used  always 
to  remark  that  in  whatever  company  he  was,  he  was 
always  deferred  to  as  an  authority  in  anything  approach- 
ing classics.  He  could  read  and  quote  Greek  and  Latin 
like  English,  spoke  German  and  French  fluently,  while 
he  was  an  excellent  geologist,  and  Fellow  of  the  Geo- 
graphical Society.  Here  is  quite  a  pretty  little  effusion 
of  his  written  at  eight  years  of  age : 

O,  Glorious  Sun,  in  thy  palace  of  light, 
To  behold  thee  methinks  is  a  beautiful  sight. 
O,  Glorious  Sun,  come  out  of  thy  cloud, 
No  longer  thy  brightness  in  darkness  shroud. 
Let  thy  glorious  beams  like  a  golden  Flood 
Pour  over  the  hills  and  the  valleys  and  wood. 
See!  Mountains  of  light  around  him  rise. 
While  he  in  a  golden  ocean  lies: 
O,  Glorious  Sun,  in  thy  Palace  of  Light 
To  behold  thee  methinks  is  a  beautiful  sight. 
Algernon  Sydney  Grenfell 
Aged  eight  years 


EARLY  DAYS  9 

Some  of  my  brother's  poems  and  hymns  have  been 
published  in  the  school  magazine,  or  printed  privately; 
but  he,  too,  has  only  published  a  Spanish  grammar,  a 
Greek  lexicon,  and  a  few  articles  in  the  papers.  While 
at  Oxford  he  ran  daily,  with  some  friends,  during  one 
"eights  week"  a  cynical  comic  paper  called  "The  Rat- 
tle," to  boost  some  theories  he  held,  and  which  he  wished 
to  enforce,  and  also  to  "score"  a  few  of  the  dons  to 
whom  he  objected.  This  would  have  resulted  in  his  being 
asked  to  retire  for  a  season  from  the  seat  of  learning  at 
the  request  of  his  enemies,  had  not  our  beloved  provost 
routed  the  special  cause  of  the  whole  trouble,  who  was 
himself  contributing  to  a  London  society  paper,  by  re- 
plying that  it  was  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  the  scurrilous 
rags  of  London  found  an  echo  in  Oxford.  Moreover,  a 
set  of  "The  Rattle"  was  ordered  to  be  bound  and  placed 
in  the  college  archives,  where  it  may  still  be  seen. 

My  father  having  a  very  great  deal  of  responsibility 
and  worry  during  the  long  school  terms,  as  he  was  not 
only  head  master,  but  owned  the  school  as  well,  which 
he  had  purchased  from  his  great-uncle,  used  to  leave 
almost  the  day  the  holidays  began  and  travel  abroad 
with  my  mother.  This  partly  accounts  for  the  very  un- 
usual latitude  allowed  to  us  boys  in  coming  and  going 
from  the  house  —  no  one  being  anxious  if  now  and  again 
we  did  not  return  at  night.  The  school  matron  was  left 
in  charge  of  the  vast  empty  barracks,  and  we  had  the 
run  of  play-field,  gymnasium,  and  everything  else  we 
wanted.  To  outwit  the  matron  was  always  considered 
fair  play  by  us  boys,  and  on  many  occasions  we  were 
more  than  successful. 

One  time,  when  we  had  been  acquiring  some  new  lines 
of  thought  from  some  trashy  boys'  books  of  the  period, 
we  became  fired  with  the  desire  to  enjoy  the  ruling  pas- 


10  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

sion  of  the  professional  burglar.  Though  never  kept 
short  of  anything,  we  decided  that  one  night  we  would 
raid  the  large  school  storeroom  while  the  matron  slept. 
As  always,  the  planning  was  entrusted  to  my  brother. 
It  was,  of  course,  a  perfectly  easy  affair,  but  we  played 
the  whole  game  "according  to  Cavendish."  We  let  our- 
selves out  of  the  window  at  midnight,  glued  brown  paper 
to  the  window  panes,  cut  out  the  putty,  forced  the  catch, 
and  stole  sugar,  currants,  biscuits,  and  I  am  ashamed 
to  say  port  wine  —  which  we  mulled  in  a  tin  can  over 
the  renovated  fire  in  the  matron's  own  sanctum.  In  the 
morning  the  remainder  was  turned  over  to  fishermen 
friends  who  were  passing  along  shore  on  their  way  to 
catch  the  early  tide. 

I  had  no  share  in  two  other  of  my  brother's  famous 
escapades,  though  at  the  time  it  was  a  source  of  keen 
regret,  for  we  were  sent  to  different  public  schools,  as 
being,  I  suppose,  incompatible.  But  we  heard  with  pride 
how  he  had  extracted  phosphorus  from  the  chemical 
laboratory  and  while  drawing  luminous  ghosts  on  the 
wall  for  the  benefit  of  the  timorous,  had  set  fire  to  the 
large  dormitory  and  the  boys'  underclothing  neatly  laid 
out  on  the  beds,  besides  burning  himself  badly.  Later  he 
pleaded  guilty  to  beeswaxing  the  seat  of  the  boys  in  front 
of  him  in  chapel,  much  to  the  detriment  of  their  trousers 
and  the  destruction  of  the  dignity  of  Sunday  worship. 

During  the  time  that  my  parents  were  away  we  never 
found  a  moment  in  which  to  be  lonely,  but  on  one  occa- 
sion it  occurred  to  us  that  the  company  of  some  friends 
would  add  to  our  enjoyment.  Why  we  waited  till  my 
father  and  mother  departed  I  do  not  know,  but  I  re- 
call that  immediately  they  had  gone  we  spent  a  much- 
valued  sixpence  in  telegraphing  to  a  cousin  in  London 
to  come  down  to  us  for  the  holidays.  Our  message  read; 


EARLY  DAYS  11 

"Dear  Sid.  Come  down  and  stay  the  holidays.  Father 
has  gone  to  Aix."  We  were  somewhat  chagrined  to  re- 
ceive the  following  day  an  answer,  also  by  wire:  "Not 
gone  yet.  Father."  It  appeared  that  my  father  and 
mother  had  stayed  the  night  in  London  in  the  very  house 
to  which  we  had  wired,  and  Sid.  having  to  ask  his  father's 
permission  in  order  to  get  his  railway  fare,  our  uncle  had 
accepted  the  invitation  to  my  father.  It  was  character- 
istic of  my  parents  that  Sid.  came  duly  along,  but  they 
could  not  keep  from  sharing  the  joke  with  my  uncle. 

During  term-time  some  of  our  grown-up  relatives 
would  occasionally  visit  us.  But  alas,  it  was  only  their 
idiosyncrasies  which  used  to  make  any  impression  upon 
us.  One,  a  great-uncle,  and  a  very  distinguished  person, 
being  Professor  of  Political  Economy  at  Oxford,  and  a 
great  friend  of  the  famous  Dr.  Jowett,  the  chancellor, 
was  the  only  man  we  knew  who  ever,  at  any  time,  stood 
up  long  to  my  father  in  argument.  It  was  only  on  rare 
occasions  that  we  ever  witnessed  such  a  contest,  but  I 
shall  never  forget  one  which  took  place  in  the  evening 
in  our  drawing-room.  My  great-uncle  was  a  small  man, 
rather  stout  and  pink,  and  almost  bald-headed.  He  got 
so  absorbed  in  his  arguments,  which  he  always  delivered 
walking  up  and  down,  that  on  this  occasion,  coming  to 
an  old-fashioned  sofa,  he  stepped  right  up  onto  the  seat, 
cHmbed  over  the  back,  and  went  on  all  the  time  with  his 
remarks,  as  if  only  punctuating  them  thereby. 

Whether  some  of  our  pranks  were  suggested  by  those 
of  which  we  heard,  I  do  not  remember.  One  of  my  father's 
yarns,  however,  always  stuck  in  my  memory.  For  once, 
being  in  a  very  good  humour,  he  told  us  how  when  some 
distinguished  old  lady  had  come  to  call  on  his  father  — 
a  house  master  with  Arnold  at  Rugby  —  he  had  been 
especially  warned  not  to  interrupt  this  important  person, 


12  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

who  had  come  to  see  about  her  son's  entering  my  grand- 
father's "  House."  It  so  happened  that  quite  uncon- 
sciously the  lady  in  question  had  seated  herself  on  an  old 
cane-bottomed  armchair  in  which  father  had  been  play- 
ing, thus  depriving  him  temporarily  of  a  toy  with  which 
he  desired  to  amuse  himself.  He  never,  even  in  later  life, 
was  noted  for  undue  patience,  and  after  endeavouring 
in  vain  to  await  her  departure,  he  somehow  secured  a 
long  pin.  With  this  he  crawled  from  behind  under  the 
seat,  and  by  discreetly  probing  upwards,  succeeded  sud- 
denly in  dislodging  his  enemy. 

Our  devotions  on  Sunday  were  carried  out  in  the  parish 
church  of  the  village  of  Neston,  there  being  no  place  of 
worhip  of  the  Established  Church  in  our  little  village. 
In  term-time  we  were  obliged  to  go  morning  and  evening 
to  the  long  services,  which  never  made  any  concessions 
to  youthful  capacities.  So  in  holiday-time,  though  it  was 
essential  that  we  should  go  in  the  morning  to  represent 
the  house,  we  were  permitted  to  stay  home  in  the  eve- 
ning. But  even  the  mornings  were  a  time  of  great  weari- 
ness, and  oft-recurrent  sermons  on  the  terrible  fate  which 
awaited  those  who  never  went  to  church,  and  the  still 
more  untoward  end  which  was  in  store  for  frequenters 
of  dissenting  meeting-houses,  failed  to  awaken  in  us  the 
respect  due  to  the  occasion. 

On  the  way  to  church  we  had  generally  to  pass  by 
those  who  dared  even  the  awful  fate  of  the  latter.  It  was 
our  idea  that  to  tantalize  us  they  wore  especially  gor- 
geous apparel  while  we  had  to  wear  black  Etons  and  a 
top  hat  —  which,  by  the  way,  greatly  annoyed  us.  One 
waistcoat  especially  excited  our  animosity,  and  from  it 
we  conceived  the  title  "  specklebelly ,"  by  which  we  ever 
afterwards  designated  the  whole  "genus  nonconformist." 
The  entrance  to  the  chapel  (ours  was  the  Church!)  was 


EARLY  DAYS  13 

through  a  door  in  a  high  wall,  over  which  we  could  not 
see;  and  my  youthful  brain  used  to  conjure  up  unright- 
eous and  strange  orgies  which  we  felt  must  take  place  in 
those  precincts  which  we  were  never  permitted  to  enter. 
Our  Sunday  Scripture  lessons  had  grounded  us  very 
familiarly  with  the  perverse  habits  of  that  section  of  the 
Chosen  People  who  would  serve  Baal  and  Moloch,  when 
it  obviously  paid  so  much  better  not  to  do  so.  But  al- 
though we  counted  the  numbers  which  we  saw  going  in, 
and  sometimes  met  them  comimg  out,  they  seemed  never 
to  lessen  perceptibly.  On  this  account  our  minds,  with 
the  merciless  logic  of  childhood,  gradually  discounted 
the  threatened  calamities. 

This  must  have  accounted  for  the  lapse  in  our  own 
conduct,  and  a  sort  of  comfortable  satisfaction  that  the 
Almighty  contented  Himself  in  merely  counting  noses 
in  the  pews.  For  even  though  it  was  my  brother  who  got 
into  trouble,  I  shall  never  forget  the  harangue  on  im- 
piety that  awaited  us  when  a  most  unchristian  sexton 
reported  to  our  father  that  the  pew  in  front  of  ours  had 
been  found  chalked  on  the  back,  so  as  to  make  its  oc- 
cupants the  object  of  undisguised  attention  from  the 
rest  of  the  congregation.  As  circumstantial  evidence  also 
against  us,  he  offered  some  tell-tale  squares  of  silver 
paper,  on  which  we  had  been  cooking  chocolates  on  the 
steam  pipes  during  the  sermon. 

In  all  my  childhood  I  can  only  remember  one  single 
punishment,  among  not  a  few  which  I  received,  which  I 
resented  —  and  for  years  I  never  quite  forgot  it.  Some 
one  had  robbed  a  very  favourite  apple  tree  in  our  orchard 
—  an  escapade  of  which  I  was  perfectly  capable,  but  in 
this  instance  had  not^naa  the  satisfaction  of  sharing. 
Some  evidence  had  been  lodged  against  me,  of  which  I 
was  not  informed,  and  I  therefore  had  no  opportunity 


14  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

to  challenge  it.  I  was  asked  before  a  whole  class  of  my 
schoolmates  if  I  had  committed  the  act,  and  at  once 
denied  it.  Without  any  hearing  I  was  adjudged  guilty, 
and  promptly  subjected  to  the  punishment  of  the  day 
—  a  good  birching.  On  every  occasion  on  which  we 
were  offered  the  alternative  of  detention,  we  invariably 
"plumped"  for  the  rod,  and  got  it  over  quickly,  and,  as 
we  considered,  creditably  —  taking  it  smihng  as  long  as 
we  could.  But  that  one  act  of  injustice,  the  disgrace 
which  it  carried  of  making  me  a  liar  before  my  friends, 
seared  my  very  soul.  I  vowed  I  would  get  even  whatever 
it  cost,  and  I  regret  to  say  that  I  had  n't  long  to  wait  the 
opportunity.  For  I  scored  both  the  apples  and  the  lie 
against  the  punishment  before  many  months.  Nor  was 
I  satisfied  then.  It  rankled  in  my  mind  both  by  day  and 
by  night;  and  it  taught  me  an  invaluable  lesson  —  never 
to  suspect  or  condemn  rashly.  It  was  one  of  Dr.  Arnold's 
boys  at  Rugby,  I  believe,  who  summed  up  his  master's 
character  by  saying,  "The  head  was  a  beast,  but  he  was 
always  a  just  beast." 

At  fourteen  years  of  age  my  brother  was  sent  to  Rep- 
ton,  to  the  house  of  an  uncle  by  marriage  —  an  arrange- 
ment which  has  persuaded  me  never  to  send  boys  to 
their  relatives  for  training.  My  brother's  pranks  were  un- 
doubtedly many,  but  they  were  all  boyish  and  legitimate 
ones.  After  a  time,  however,  he  was  removed  at  his  own 
request,  and  sent  to  Clifton,  where  he  was  head  of  the 
school,  and  the  school  house  also,  under  Dr.  Percival, 
the  late  Bishop  of  Hereford.  From  there  he  took  an  open 
scholarship  for  Oxford. 

It  was  most  wisely  decided  to  send  us  to  separate 
schools,  and  therefore  at  fourteen  I  found  myself  at 
Marlborough  —  a  school  of  nearly  six  hundred  resident 
boys,  on  entering  which  I  had  won  a  scholarship. 


CHAPTER  II 

SCHOOL  LIFE 

Marlborough  "College,"  as  we  say  in  England  for 
a  large  University  preparatory  school,  is  situated  in 
Wiltshire,  in  a  perfectly  beautiful  country,  close  to  the 
Savernake  Forest  —  one  of  the  finest  in  all  England.  As 
everything  and  everybody  was  strange  to  me  on  my 
arrival,  had  I  been  brought  up  to  be  less  self-reliant  the 
events  of  my  first  day  or  two  would  probably  have  im- 
pressed themselves  more  deeply  on  my  memory  than 
is  the  case.  Some  Good  Samaritan,  hearing  that  I  was 
bound  for  a  certain  house,  allowed  me  to  follow  him  from 
the  station  to  the  inn  —  for  a  veritable  old  inn  it  was. 
It  was  one  of  those  lovely  old  wayside  hostels  along  the 
main  road  to  the  west,  which,  with  the  decline  of  coach- 
ing days,  found  its  way  into  the  market,  and  had  fallen 
to  the  hammer  for  the  education  of  youth.  Exactly  how 
the  adaptation  had  been  accomplished  I  never  quite 
understood.  The  building  formed  the  end  of  a  long 
avenue  of  trees  and  was  approached  through  high  gates 
from  the  main  road.  It  was  flanked  on  the  east  side  by 
other  houses,  which  fitted  in  somewhat  inharmoniously, 
but  served  as  school-rooms,  dining-hall,  chapel,  racquets 
and  fives  courts,  studies,  and  other  dwelling-houses.  The 
whole  was  entirely  enclosed  so  that  no  one  could  pass  in 
or  out,  after  the  gates  were  shut,  without  ringing  up  the 
porter  from  his  lodge,  and  having  one's  name  taken  as 
being  out  after  hours.  At  least  it  was  supposed  that  no 
one  could,  though  we  boys  soon  found  that  there  were 
more  ways  than  one  leading  to  Rome. 

The  separate  dwelling-houses  were  named  A,  B,  and  C. 


16  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

I  was  detailed  to  C  House,  the  old  inn  itself.  Each  house 
was  again  divided  into  three,  with  its  own  house  master, 
and  its  own  special  colour  and  badges.  Our  three  were 
at  the  time  "Sharps,"  "Upcutts,"  and  "Bakers."  Our 
particular  one  occupied  the  second  floor,  and  was  reached 
by  great  oak  staircases,  which,  if  you  were  smart,  you 
could  ascend  at  about  six  steps  at  a  time.  This  was  often 
a  singular  desideratum,  because  until  you  reached  the 
fifth  form,  according  to  law  you  ascended  by  the  less 
direct  back  stairway. 

Our  colours  were  white  and  maroon,  and  our  sign  a 
bishop's  mitre  —  which  effigy  I  still  find  scribbled  all 
over  the  few  book  relics  which  I  have  retained,  and 
which  emblem,  when  borne  subsequently  on  my  velvet 
football  cap,  proved  to  be  the  nearest  I  ever  was  to  ap- 
proach to  that  dignified  insignia. 

My  benefactor,  on  the  night  of  my  arrival,  having 
done  more  for  me  than  a  new  boy  could  expect  of  an  old 
one,  was  whirled  off  in  the  stream  of  his  returning  chums 
long  before  I  had  found  my  resting-place  for  the  night. 
The  dormitory  to  v/hich  I  at  last  found  myself  assigned 
contained  no  less  than  twenty-five  beds,  and  seemed  to 
me  a  veritable  wilderness.  If  the  coaches  which  used  to 
stop  here  could  have  ascended  the  stairs,  it  might  have 
accommodated  several.  What  useful  purpose  it  could 
have  served  in  those  far-off  days  I  never  succeeded  in 
deciding.  The  room  most  nearly  Hke  it  which  I  can  recall 
is  the  old  dining-hall  of  a  great  manor,  into  which  the 
knights  in  armour  rode  on  horseback  to  meals,  that  be- 
ing far  less  trouble  than  removing  one's  armour,  and 
quite  as  picturesque.  More  or  less  amicably  I  obtained 
possession  of  a  bed  in  a  good  location,  under  a  big  win- 
dow which  looked  out  over  the  beautiful  gardens  below. 
I  cannot  remember  that  I  experienced  any  of  those  heart- 


SCHOOL  LIFE  17 

searchings  or  forebodings  which  sentiment  deplores  as 
the  inevitable  lot  of  the  unprotected  innocent. 

One  informal  battle  during  the  first  week  with  a 
boy  possessed  of  the  sanctity  of  having  come  up  from 
the  lower  school,  and  therefore  being  an  "old  boy," 
achieved  for  me  more  privileges  than  the  actual  decision 
perhaps  entitled  one  to  enjoy,  namely,  being  left  alone. 
I  subsequently  became  known  as  the  "Beast,"  owing  to 
my  belligerent  nature  and  the  undue  copiousness  of  my 
hair. 

The  fact  that  I  was  placed  in  the  upper  fourth  form 
condemned  me  to  do  my  "prep"  in  the  intolerable  bar- 
rack called  "Big  School"  —  a  veritable  bear-garden  to 
which  about  three  hundred  small  boys  were  relegated  to 
study.  Order  was  kept  by  a  master  and  a  few  monitors, 
who  wandered  to  and  fro  from  end  to  end  of  the  building, 
while  we  were  supposed  to  work.  For  my  part,  I  never 
tried  it,  partly  because  the  work  came  very  easy  to  me, 
while  the  "repetition"  was  more  readily  learned  from 
a  loose  page  at  odd  times  like  dinner  and  chapel,  and 
partly  because,  winning  a  scholarship  during  the  term, 
I  was  transferred  to  a  buildilig  reserved  for  twenty- 
eight  such  privileged  individuals  until  they  gained  the 
further  distinction  of  a  place  in  the  house  class-room, 
by  getting  their  transfer  into  the  fifth  form. 

Besides  those  who  lived  in  the  big  quad  there  were 
several  houses  outside  the  gates,  known  as  "Out- 
Houses."  The  boys  there  fared  a  good  deal  better  than 
we  who  lived  in  college,  and  I  presume  paid  more  highly 
for  it.  Our  meals  were  served  in  "Big  Hall,"  where  the 
whole  four  hundred  of  us  were  fed.  The  meals  were  ex- 
ceptionally poor;  so  much  so  that  we  boys  at  the  be- 
ginning of  term  formed  what  we  called  brewing  com- 
panies —  which  provided  as  far  as  possible   breakfasts 


18  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  suppers  for  ourselves  all  term.  As  a  protection 
against  early  bankruptcy,  it  was  our  custom  to  deposit 
our  money  with  a  rotund  but  popular  school  oflBcial, 
known  always  by  a  corruption  of  his  name  as  "the  Slug." 
Every  Saturday  night  he  would  dole  out  to  you  your 
deposit  made  on  return  from  the  holidays,  divided  into 
equal  portions  by  the  number  of  weeks  in  the  term.  Once 
one  was  in  the  fifth  form,  brewing  became  easy,  for  one 
had  a  right  to  a  place  on  the  class-room  fire  for  one's 
kettle  or  saucepan.  Till  then  the  space  over  gas  stoves  in 
Big  School  being  strictly  Hmited,  the  right  was  only 
acquired  "vi  et  armis."  Moreover,  most  of  the  fourth 
form  boys  and  the  "Shells,"  a  class  between  them  and 
the  fifth,  if  they  had  to  work  after  evening  chapel,  had 
to  sit  behind  desks  around  the  house  class-room  facing 
the  centre,  in  which  as  a  rule  the  fifth  form  boys  were 
lazily  cooking  and  devouring  their  suppers.  Certain 
parts  of  those  repasts,  like  sausages,  we  would  import 
ready  cooked  from  the  "Tuck  Shop,"  and  hence  they 
only  needed  warming  up.  Breakfast  in  Big  School  was 
no  comfort  to  one,  and  personally  I  seldom  attended  it. 
But  at  dinner  and  tea  one  had  to  appear,  and  remain  till 
the  doors  were  opened  again.  It  was  a  kind  of  roll-call; 
and  the  penalty  for  being  late  was  fifty  lines  to  be  written 
out.  As  my  own  habits  were  never  as  regular  as  they 
should  have  been,  whenever  I  was  able  to  keep  ahead,  I 
possessed  pages  of  such  lines,  neatly  written  out  during 
school  hours  and  ready  for  emergencies.  On  other  occa- 
sions I  somewhat  shamefacedly  recall  that  I  employed 
other  boys,  who  devoted  less  time  to  athletics  than  was 
my  wont,  to  help  me  out  —  their  only  remuneration 
being  the  "joy  of  service." 

The  great  desire  of  every  boy  who  could  hope  to  do  so 
was  to  excel  in  athletics.  This  fact  has  much  to  commend 


SCHOOL  LIFE  19 

it  In  such  an  educational  system,  for  it  undoubtedly  kept 
its  devotees  from  innumerable  worse  troubles  and  dan- 
gers. All  athletics  were  compulsory,  unless  one  had  ob- 
tained permanent  exemption  from  the  medical  officer.  If 
one  was  not  chosen  to  play  on  any  team  during  the  after- 
noon, each  boy  had  to  go  to  gymnasium  for  drill  and 
exercises,  or  to  "flannel"  and  run  round  the  Aylesbury 
Arms,  an  old  public  house  three  quarters  of  a  mile  dis- 
tant. Any  breach  of  this  law  was  severely  punished  by 
the  boys  themselves.  It  involved  a  "fives  batting,"  that 
is,  a  "birching"  carried  out  with  a  hardwood  fives  bat, 
after  chapel  in  the  presence  of  the  house.  As  a  breach  of 
patriotism,  it  carried  great  disgrace  with  it,  and  was 
very,  very  seldom  necessary. 

Experience  would  make  me  a  firm  believer  in  self- 
government —  determination  is  the  popular  term  now, 
I  beheve.  No  punishments  ever  touched  the  boys  one 
tenth  part  as  much  as  those  administered  by  themselves. 
On  one  occasion  two  of  the  Big  School  monitors,  who 
were  themselves  notorious  far  more  for  their  constant 
breaches  of  school  law  than  for  their  observance  of  it, 
decided  to  make  capital  at  the  expense  of  the  sixth  form. 
One  day,  just  as  the  dinner-bell  rang,  they  locked  the 
sixth  form  door,  while  a  conclave  was  being  held  inside. 
Though  everyone  was  intended  to  know  to  whom  the 
credit  belonged,  it  was  understood  that  no  one  would 
dream  of  giving  evidence  against  them.  But  it  so 
happened  that  their  voices  had  been  recognized  from 
within  by  one  of  the  sixth  form  boys  —  and  "bulHes" 
and  unpopular  though  the  culprits  were,  they  would  n't 
deny  their  guilt.  Their  condign  punishment  was  to  be 
"fives -batted"  publicly  in  Big  School— Jn  which,  how- 
ever, they  regained  very  considerable  popularity  by  the 
way  they  took  a  "spanking"  without  turning  a  hair, 


20  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

though  it  cost  no  less  than  a  dozen  bats  before  it  was 
over. 

The  publicity  of  Big  School  was  the  only  redemption 
of  such  a  bear-garden,  but  that  was  a  good  feature.  It 
served  to  make  us  toe  the  line.  After  ten,  it  was  the  cus- 
tom to  have  what  we  called  "Upper  School  Boxing."  A 
big  ring  was  formed,  boxing-gloves  provided,  and  any 
differences  which  one  might  have  to  settle  could  be  ar- 
ranged there.  There  was  more  energy  than  science  about 
the  few  occasions  on  which  I  appeared  personally  in  the 
ring,  but  it  was  an  excellent  safety-valve  and  quite  an 
evolutionary  experience. 

The  exigency  of  having  to  play  our  games  immediately 
after  noon  dinner  had  naturally  taught  the  boys  at  the 
head  of  athletic  affairs  that  it  was  not  wise  to  eat  too 
much.  Dinner  was  the  one  solid  meal  which  the  college 
provided,  and  most  of  us  wanted  it  badly  enough  when 
it  came  along,  especially  the  suet  puddings  which  went 
by  the  name  of  "hollies  "  and  were  particularly  satisfying. 
But  whenever  any  game  of  importance  was  scheduled,  a 
remorseless  card  used  to  be  passed  round  the  table  just 
after  the  meat  stage,  bearing  the  ominous  legend  "No 
bolly  to-day."  To  make  sure  that  there  were  no  truants, 
all  hands  were  forced  to  "Hooverize."  Oddly  enough, 
beer  in  large  blue  china  jugs  was  freely  served  at  every 
dinner.  We  called  it  "surpes,"  and  boys,  however  small, 
helped  themselves  to  as  much  as  they  liked.  Moreover, 
as  soon  as  the  game  was  over,  all  who  had  their  house 
colours  might  come  in  and  get  "surpes"  served  to  them 
freely  through  the  buttery  window.  Both  practices,  I 
believe,  have  long  since  fortunately  fallen  into  desuetude. 

To  encourage  the  budding  athlete  there  was  an  ex- 
cellent custom  of  classifying  not  only  the  players  who 
attained  the  first  team;  but  beyond  them  there  were  "the 


SCHOOL  LIFE  21 

Forty"  who  wore  velvet  caps  with  tassels,  "the  Sixty'* 
who  wore  velvet  caps  with  silver  braid,  "the  Eighty,'* 
and  even  "the  Hundred"  —  all  of  whom  were  posted 
from  time  to  time,  and  so  stimulated  their  members  to 
try  for  the  next  grade. 

Like  every  other  school  there  were  bounds  beyond 
which  one  might  not  go,  and  therefore  beyond  which  one 
always  wanted  to  go.  Compulsory  games  limited  the 
temptation  in  that  direction  very  considerably;  and  my 
own  breaches  were  practically  always  to  get  an  extra 
swim.  We  had  an  excellent  open-air  swimming  pool, 
made  out  of  a  branch  of  the  river  Kenneth,  and  were 
allowed  one  bathe  a  day,  besides  the  dip  before  morning 
chapel,  which  only  the  few  took,  and  which  did  not 
count  as  a  bathe.  The  punishment  for  breaking  the  rule 
was  severe,  involving  a  week  off  for  a  first  offence.  But 
one  was  not  easily  caught,  for  even  a  sixth-former  found 
hundreds  of  naked  boys  very  much  ahke  in  the  water, 
and  the  fact  of  any  one  having  transgressed  the  limit 
was  very  hard  to  detect.  Nor  were  we  bound  to  incrim- 
inate ourselves  by  replying  to  leading  questions. 

"Late  for  Gates"  was  a  more  serious  crime,  involving 
detention  from  beloved  games  —  and  many  were  the 
expedients  to  which  we  resorted  to  avoid  such  an  un- 
toward contingency.  I  remember  well  waiting  for  an 
hour  outside  the  porter's  view,  hoping  for  some  delivery 
wagon  to  give  me  a  chance  to  get  inside.  For  it  was  far 
too  light  to  venture  to  climb  the  lofty  railings  before 
"prep"  time.  Good  fortime  ordained,  however,  that  a 
four-wheel  cab  should  come  along  in  time,  containing 
the  parents  of  a  "hopeful"  in  the  sick-room.  It  seemed  a 
desperate  venture,  for  to  "run"  the  gate  was  a  worse 
offence  than  being  late  and  owning  up.  But  we  succeeded 
by  standing  on  the  off  step,  imquestioned  by  the  person 


22  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

inside,  who  guessed  at  once  what  the  trouble  was,  and 
who  proved  to  be  sport  enough  to  engage  the  porter 
while  we  got  clear.  Later  on  a  scapegrace  who  had  more 
reason  to  require  some  by-way  than  myself,  revealed  to 
me  a  way  which  involved  a  long  detour  and  a  climb  over 
the  laundry  roof.  Of  this,  on  another  occasion,  I  was 
sincerely  glad  to  avail  myself.  One  of  the  older  boys,  I 
remember,  made  a  much  bolder  venture.  He  waited  till 
dusk,  and  then  boldly  walked  in  through  the  masters' 
garden.  As  luck  would  have  it,  he  met  our  form  master, 
whom  we  will  call  Jones,  walking  the  other  way.  It  so 
happened  he  possessed  a  voice  which  he  knew  was  much 
like  that  of  another  master,  so  simply  sprinting  a  little 
he  called  out,  "Night,  night,  Jones,"  and  got  by  without 
discovery. 

Our  chapel  in  those  days  was  not  a  thing  of  beauty;  but 
since  then  it  has  been  rebuilt  (out  of  our  stomachs,  the 
boys  used  to  say)  and  is  a  model  work  of  art.  Attendance 
at  chapel  was  compulsory,  and  no  "cuts"  were  allowed. 
Moreover,  once  late,  you  were  given  lines,  besides  losing 
your  chapel  half-holiday.  So  the  extraordinary  zeal  ex- 
hibited to  be  marked  off  as  present  should  not  be  attri- 
buted to  religious  fervour.  The  chapel  was  entered  from 
quad  by  two  iron  gates,  with  the  same  lofty  railings 
which  guarded  the  entrance  on  each  side.  The  bell  tolled 
for  five  minutes,  then  was  silent  one  minute,  and  then  a 
single  toll  was  given,  called  "stroke."  At  that  instant  the 
two  masters  who  stood  by  the  pillars  guarding  each  gate, 
jumped  across,  closing  the  gates  if  they  could,  and  every 
one  outside  was  late.  Those  inside  the  open  walk  —  the 
length  of  the  chapel  that  led  to  the  doors  at  the  far  end  — 
then  continued  to  march  in. 

During  prayers  each  form  master  sat  opposite  his  form, 
all  of  which  faced  the  central  aisle,  and  marked  off  those 


SCHOOL  LIFE  23 

present.  Almost  every  morning  half-dressed  boys,  with 
shirts  open  and  collars  unbuttoned,  boots  unlaced,  and 
jumping  into  coats  and  waistcoats  as  they  dashed  along, 
could  be  seen  rushing  towards  the  gate  during  the  omi- 
nous minute  of  silence.  There  was  always  time  to  get 
straight  before  the  mass  of  boys  inside  had  emptied  into 
chapel;  and  I  never  remember  a  gate  master  stopping  a 
boy  before  "stroke"  for  insufficiency  of  coverings.  Many 
were  the  subterfuges  employed  to  get  excused,  and  natu- 
rally some  form  masters  were  themselves  less  regular  than 
others,  though  you  never  could  absolutely  count  on  any 
particular  one  being  absent.  Twice  in  my  time  gates  were 
rushed  —  that  is,  when  "stroke"  went  such  crowds  of 
flying  boys  were  just  at  the  gate  that  the  masters  were 
unable  to  stop  the  onslaught,  and  were  themselves 
brushed  aside  or  knocked  down  under  the  seething  mass 
of  panic-stricken  would-be  worshippers.  On  one  of  these 
occasions  we  were  forgiven  —  "stroke"  was  ten  seconds 
early;  on  the  other  a  half -holiday  was  stopped,  as  one  of 
the  masters  had  been  injured.  To  trip  one's  self  up,  and 
get  a  bloody  nose,  and  possibly  a  face  scratched  on  the 
gravel,  and  then  a  "sick  cut"  from  the  kindly  old  school 
doctor,  was  one  of  the  more  common  ways  boys  discov- 
ered of  saving  their  chapel  half  —  when  it  was  a  very 
close  call. 

The  school  surgery  was  presided  over  in  my  day  by  a 
much-beloved  old  physician  of  the  old  school,  named 
Fergus,  which  the  boys  had  so  long  ago  corrupted  into 
"Fungi"  that  many  a  lad  was  caught  mistakenly  ad- 
dressing the  old  gentleman  as  Dr.  Fungi  —  an  error  I 
always  fancied  to  be  rather  appreciated. 

By  going  to  surgery  you  could  very  frequently  escape 
evening  chapel  —  a  very  desirable  event  if  you  had  a 
"big  brew"  coming  off  in  class-room,  for  you  could  get 


U  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

things  cooked  and  have  plenty  of  room  on  the  fire  before 
the  others  were  out.  But  one  always  had  to  pay  for  the 
advantage,  the  old  doctor  being  very  much  addicted  to 
potions.  I  never  shall  forget  the  horrible  tap  in  the  corner, 
out  of  which  "cough  mixture"  flowed  as  "a  healing  for 
the  nations,"  but  which,  nasty  as  it  was,  was  the  cheapest 
price  at  which  one  could  purchase  the  cut.  Some  boys, 
anxious  to  cut  lessons,  foimd  that  by  putting  a  little  soap 
in  one's  eye,  that  organ  would  become  red  and  watery. 
This  they  practised  so  successfully  that  sometimes  for 
weeks  they  would  be  forbidden  to  do  lessons  on  account 
of  "  eye-strain."  They  had  to  use  lotions,  eye-shades,  and 
every  spectacle  possible  was  tried,  but  all  to  no  avail. 
Sometimes  they  used  so  much  soap  that  I  was  sure  the 
doctor  would  suspect  the  bubbles. 

I  had  two  periods  in  sick-room  with  a  worrying  cough, 
where  the  time  was  always  made  so  pleasant  that  one 
was  not  tempted  to  hasten  recovery.  Diagnosis,  more- 
over, was  not  so  accurate  in  those  days  as  it  might  have 
been,  and  the  dear  old  doctor  took  no  risks.  So  at  the 
age  of  sixteen  I  was  sent  off  for  a  winter  to  the  South  of 
France,  with  the  diagnosis  of  congestion  of  the  lungs. 

One  of  my  aunts,  a  Miss  Hutchinson,  living  at  Hyeres 
in  the  South  of  France,  was  delighted  to  receive  me. With 
a  widowed  friend  and  two  charming  and  athletic  daugh- 
ters, she  had  a  very  pretty  villa  on  the  hills  overlooking 
the  sea.  My  orders  —  to  live  out  of  doors  —  were  very 
literally  obeyed.  In  light  flannel  costumes  we  roamed  the 
hills  after  moths  and  butterflies,  early  and  late.  We  kept 
the  frogs  in  miniature  ponds  in  boxes  covered  with  net- 
ting, providing  them  with  bamboo  ladders  to  climb,  and 
so  tell  us  when  it  was  going  to  be  wet  weather.  We  had 
also  enclosures  in  which  we  kept  banks  of  trap-door 
spiders,  which  used  to  afford  us  intense  interest  with 


SCHOOL  LIFE  25 

their  clever  artifices.  To  these  we  added  the  breeding  of 
the  more  beautiful  butterflies  and  moths,  and  so,  with- 
out knowing  that  we  were  learning,  we  were  taught  many 
and  valuable  truths  of  life.  There  were  horses  to  ride 
also,  and  a  beautiful  "plage"  to  bathe  upon.  It  was  al- 
ways simny  and  warm,  and  I  invariably  look  back  on 
that  winter  as  spent  in  paradise.  I  was  permitted  to  go 
over  with  a  young  friend  to  the  Carnival  at  Nice,  where, 
disguised  as  a  clown,  and  then  as  a  priest,  with  the 
abandon  of  boys,  we  enjoyed  every  moment  of  the  time  — 
the  world  was  so  big  and  wonderful.  The  French  that  I 
had  very  quickly  learned,  as  we  always  spoke  it  at  our 
villa,  stood  me  on  this  occasion  in  good  stead.  But  better 
still,  I  happened,  when  climbing  into  one  of  the  flower- 
bedecked  carriages  parading  in  the  "bataille  de  fleurs" 
—  which,  being  in  costume,  was  quite  the  right  thing  to 
do  —  to  find  that  the  owner  was  an  old  friend  of  my 
family,  one  Sir  William  Hut.  He  at  once  carried  me  to 
his  home  for  the  rest  of  the  Carnival,  and,  of  course, 
made  it  doubly  enjoyable. 

A  beautiful  expedition,  made  later  in  that  region, 
which  lives  in  my  memory,  was  to  the  gardens  at  La 
Mortola,  over  the  Italian  line,  made  famous  by  the  fre- 
quent visits  of  Queen  Victoria  to  them.  They  were 
owned  by  Sir  Thomas  Hanbury,  whose  wife  was  my 
aunt's  great  friend. 

The  quaintness  of  the  memories  which  persist  longest 
in  one's  mind  often  amuse  me.  We  used,  as  good  Episco- 
palians, to  go  every  Sunday  to  the  little  English  Church 
on  the  rue  des  Palmiers.  Alas,  I  can  remember  only  one 
thing  about  those  services.  The  clergyman  had  a  pe- 
culiar impediment  in  his  speech  which  made  him  say  his 
h's  and  s's,  both  as  sh.  Thus  he  always  said  shuxnan  for 
/fuman,  and  invariably  prayed  that  God  might  be  pleased 


26  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

to  "shave  the  Queen."  He  nearly  got  me  into  trouble 
once  or  twice  through  it. 

About  the  middle  of  the  winter  I  realized  that  I  had 
made  a  mistake.  In  writing  home  I  had  so  enthusiastically 
assured  my  father  that  the  place  was  suiting  my  health, 
that  he  wrote  back  that  he  thought  in  that  case  I  might 
stand  a  httle  tutoring,  and  forthwith  I  was  despatched 
every  morning  to  a  Mr.  B.,  an  Englishman,  whose  house, 
called  the  "Hermitage,"  was  in  a  thick  wood.  I  soon  dis- 
covered that  Mr.  B.  was  obliged  to  Hve  abroad  for  his 
health,  and  that  the  coaching  of  small  boys  was  only  a 
means  to  that  end.  He  was  a  good  instructor  in  mathema- 
tics, a  study  which  I  always  loved,  but  he  insisted  on  my 
taking  Latin  and  French  Hterature,  for  neither  of  which 
i  had  the  slightest  taste.  I  consequently  made  no  effort 
whatever  to  improve  my  mind,  a  fact  which  did  not 
in  the  least  disturb  his  equanimity.  The  great  interest 
of  those  journeys  to  the  Hermitage  were  the  fables  of 
La  Fontaine  —  which  I  learned  as  repetition  and  en- 
joyed —  and  the  enormous  number  of  lizards  on  the  walls, 
which  could  disappear  with  hghtning  rapidity  when  seen, 
though  they  would  stay  almost  motionless,  waiting  for 
a  fly  to  come  near,  which  they  then  swallowed  alive. 
They  were  so  like  the  stones  one  could  almost  rub  one's 
nose  against  them  without  seeing  them.  Each  time  I 
started,  I  used  to  cut  a  little  switch  for  myself  and  try  to 
switch  them  off  their  ledges  before  they  vanished.   The 
attraction  to  the  act  lay  in  that  it  was  almost  impos- 
sible to  accomplish.  But  if  you  did  they  scored  a  bull's- 
eye  by  incontinently  discarding  their  tails,  which  made 
them  much  harder  to  catch  next  time,  and  seemed  in  no 
way  to  incommode  them,  though  it  served  to  excuse  my 
conscience  of  cruelty.  At  the  same  time  I  have  no  wish 
to  pose  as  a  protector  of  flies. 


SCHOOL  LIFE  27 

Returning  to  Marlborough  School  the  following  sum- 
mer, I  found  that  my  father,  who  knew  perfectly  the 
thorough  groundwork  I  had  received  in  Greek  and  Latin, 
had  insisted  on  my  being  given  a  remove  into  the  lower 
fifth  form  "in  absentia."  Both  he  and  I  were  aware  that 
I  could  do  the  work  easily;  but  the  form  master  resented 
it,  and  had  already  protested  in  vain.  I  believe  he  was 
a  very  good  man  in  his  way,  and  much  liked  by  those 
whom  he  liked.  But  alas,  I  was  not  one  of  them;  and 
never  once,  during  the  whole  time  I  was  in  his  form,  did 
I  get  one  single  word  of  encouragement  out  of  him.  My 
mathematical  master,  and  "stinks,"  or  chemical  master, 
I  was  very  fond  of,  and  in  both  those  departments  I 
made  good  progress. 

The  task  of  keeping  order  in  a  chemistry  class  of  boys 
is  never  easy.  The  necessary  experiments  divert  the 
master's  eye  from  the  class,  and  always  give  opportunity 
for  fooling.  Added  to  this  was  the  fact  that  our  "stinks" 
master,  like  many  scientific  teachers,  was  far  too  good- 
natured,  and  half-enjoyed  himself  the  diversion  which 
his  experiments  gave.  When  obliged  to  punish  a  boy 
caught  "flagrante  delicto,"  he  invariably  looked  out  for 
some  way  to  make  it  up  to  him  later.  It  was  the  odd  way 
he  did  it  which  endeared  him  to  us,  as  if  apologizing  for 
the  kindness.  Thus,  on  one  occasion,  suddenly  in  most 
righteous  anger,  just  as  if  a  parenthesis  to  the  remark  he 
was  making,  he  interposed,  "Come  and  be  caned,  boy. 
My  study,  twelve  o'clock."  When  the  boy  was  leaving, 
very  unrepentant  after  keeping  the  appointment,  in 
the  same  parenthetical  way  the  master  remarked,  "Go 
away,  boy.  Cake  and  wine,  my  room,  five  o'clock"  — 
which  proved  eventually  the  most  effective  part  of  the 
correction. 

To  children  there  always  appears  a  gap  between  them 


28  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  "grown-ups"  as  impassable  as  that  which  Abraham 
is  made  to  describe  as  so  great  that  they  who  would  pass 
to  and  fro  cannot.  As  we  grow  older,  we  cease  to  see  it, 
but  it  exists  all  the  same.  As  I  write,  five  children  are 
romping  through  this  old  wood  on  broom-handle  horses. 
One  has  just  fallen.  A  girl  of  twelve  at  once  retorts,  "Do 
get  up,  Willy,  your  horse  is  always  throwing  you  off." 
The  joys  of  life  lie  in  us,  not  in  things;  and  in  childhood 
imagination  is  so  big,  its  joys  so  entirely  uncloyed. 
Sometimes  grown-ups  are  apt  to  grudge  the  time  and 
trouble  put  into  apparently  transient  pleasures.  A  trivial 
strawberry  feast,  given  to  children  on  our  dear  old  lawn 
under  the  jasmine  and  rose-bushes,  something  after  the 
order  of  a  New  England  clam-bake,  still  looms  as  a 
happy  memory  of  my  parents'  love  for  children,  punctu- 
ated by  the  fact  that  though  by  continuing  a  game  in 
spite  of  warning  I  broke  a  window  early  in  the  afternoon, 
and  was  banished  to  the  nursery  "as  advised,"  my  father 
forgave  me  an  hour  later,  and  himself  fetched  me  down 
again  to  the  party. 

To  teach  us  independence,  my  father  put  us  on  an 
allowance  at  a  very  early  age,  with  a  small  bank  account, 
to  which  every  birthday  he  added  five  pounds  on  our 
behalf.  We  had  no  pony  at  that  time,  indeed  had  not 
yet  learned  to  ride,  so  our  deposits  always  went  by  the 
name  of  "pony  money."  This  was  an  excellent  plan,  for 
we  did  n't  yet  value  money  for  itself,  and  were  better 
able  to  appreciate  the  joy  of  giving  because  it  seemed 
to  postpone  the  advent  of  our  pony.  However,  when  we 
were  thought  to  have  learned  to  value  so  sentient  a  com- 
panion and  to  be  likely  to  treat  him  properly,  a  Good 
Samaritan  was  permitted  to  present  us  with  one  of  our 
most  cherished  friends.  To  us,  she  was  an  imparalleled 
beauty.  How  many  times  we  fell  over  her  head,  and  over 


SCHOOL  LIFE  29 

her  tail,  no  one  can  record.  She  always  waited  for  you  to 
remount,  so  it  did  n't  much  matter;  and  we  were  taught 
that  great  lesson  in  hfe,  not  to  be  afraid  of  falling,  but  to 
learn  how  to  take  a  fall.  My  own  bent,  however,  was 
never  for  the  things  of  the  land,  and  though  gallops  on 
the  Dee  Sands,  and  races  with  our  cousins,  who  owned 
a  broncho  and  generally  beat  us,  had  their  fascination, 
boats  were  the  things  which  appealed  most  to  me. 

Having  funds  at  our  disposal,  we  were  allowed  to  pur- 
chase material,  and  under  the  supervision  of  a  local  car- 
penter, to  build  a  boat  ourselves.  To  this  purpose  our 
old  back  nursery  was  forthwith  allocated.  The  craft 
which  we  desired  was  a  canoe  that  would  enable  us  to 
paddle  or  drift  along  the  deep  channels  of  the  river,  and 
allow  us  to  steal  upon  the  jflocks  of  birds  feeding  at  the 
edges.  Often  in  memory  I  enjoy  those  days  again  —  the 
planning,  the  modelling,  the  fitting,  the  setting-up,  and 
at  last,  the  visit  of  inspection  of  our  parents.  Alas,  stiff- 
necked  in  our  generation,  we  had  insisted  on  straight 
lines  and  a  square  stern.  Never  shall  I  forget  the  indig- 
nation aroused  in  me  by  a  cousin's  remark,  "It  looks 
awful  like  a  coffin."  The  resemblance  had  not  previously 
struck  either  of  us,  and  father  had  felt  that  the  joke  was 
too  dangerous  a  one  to  make,  and  had  said  nothing.  But 
the  pathos  of  it  was  that  we  now  saw  it  all  too  clearly. 
My  brother  explained  that  the  barque  was  intended  to 
be  not  "seen."  Ugliness  was  almost  desirable.  It  might 
help  us  if  we  called  it  the  "Reptile,"  and  painted  it  red  — 
all  of  which  suggestions  were  followed.  But  still  I  remem- 
ber feeling  a  little  crestfallen,  when  after  launching  it 
through  the  window,  it  lay  offensively  resplendent  against 
the  vivid  green  of  the  grass.  It  served,  however,  for  a 
time,  ending  its  days  honourably  by  capsizing  a  friend 
and  me,  guns  and  all,  into  the  half-frozen  water  of  the 


30  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

lower  estuary  while  we  were  stalking  some  curlew.  I  had 
to  run  home  dripping.  My  friend's  gun,  moreover,  hav- 
ing been  surreptitiously  borrowed  from  my  cousin's 
father,  was  recovered  the  following  day,  to  our  unutter- 
able relief.  Out  of  the  balance  of  the  money  spent  on  the 
boat,  we  purchased  a  pin-fire,  breech-loading  gun,  the 
pride  of  my  life  for  many  days.  I  was  being  kept  back 
from  school  at  the  time  on  account  of  a  cold,  but  I  was 
not  surprised  to  find  myself  next  day  sitting  in  a  train, 
bound  for  Marlborough,  and  "referred  once  more  to  my 
studies." 

A  little  later  my  father,  not  being  satisfied,  took  me 
away  to  read  with  a  tutor  for  the  London  matriculation, 
in  which  without  any  trouble,  I  received  a  first  class. 

A  large  boarding-school  in  England  is  like  a  miniature 
world.  One  makes  many  acquaintances,  who  change  as 
one  gets  pushed  into  new  classes,  so  at  that  stage  one 
makes  few  lasting  friends.  Those  who  remain  till  they 
attain  the  sixth  form,  and  make  the  school  teams,  prob- 
ably form  more  permanent  friendships.  I  at  least  think 
of  that  period  as  one  when  one's  bristles  were  generally 
up,  and  though  many  happy  memories  linger,  and  I  have 
found  that  to  be  an  old  Marlburian  is  a  bond  of  friend- 
ship all  the  world  over,  it  is  the  little  oddities  which  one 
remembers  best. 

A  new  scholarship  boy  had  one  day  been  assigned  to 
the  closed  corporation  of  our  particular  class-room.  To 
me  he  had  many  attractions,  for  he  was  a  genius  both  in 
mathematics  and  chemistry.  We  used  to  love  talking 
over  the  problems  that  were  set  us  as  voluntary  tasks 
for  our  spare  time;  and  our  united  excursions  in  those 
directions  were  so  successful  that  we  earned  our  class 
more  than  one  "hour  off,"  as  rewards  for  the  required 
number  of  stars  given  for  good  pieces  of  work.  My  friend 


SCHOOL  LIFE  31 

had,  however,  no  use  whatever  for  athletics.  He  had 
never  been  from  home  before,  had  no  brothers,  and  five 
sisters,  was  the  pet  of  his  parents,  and  naturally  some- 
what of  a  square  plug  in  a  round  hole  in  our  school  life. 
He  hated  all  conventions,  and  was  always  in  trouble 
with  the  boys,  for  he  entirely  neglected  his  personal  ap- 
pearance, while  his  fingers  were  always  discoloured  with 
chemicals,  and  he  would  not  even  feign  an  interest  in  the 
things  for  which  they  cared.  I  can  remember  him  sitting 
on  the  foot  of  my  bed,  talking  me  to  sleep  more  than 
once  with  some  new  plan  he  had  devised  for  a  self-steer- 
ing torpedo  or  an  absolutely  reliable  flying  machine.  He 
had  received  the  sobriquet  of  "Mad  G.,"  and  there  was 
some  justice  in  it  from  the  opposition  point  of  view.  I 
had  not  realized,  however,  that  he  was  being  bullied  — 
on  such  a  subject  he  would  never  say  a  syllable  —  till 
one  day  as  he  left  class-room  I  saw  a  large  lump  of  coal 
hit  him  square  on  the  head,  and  a  rush  of  blood  follow  it 
that  made  me  hustle  him  off  to  surgery.  Scalp  wounds 
are  not  so  dangerous  as  they  are  bloody  to  heads  as  thick 
as  ours.  His  explanation  that  he  had  fallen  down  was  too 
obvious  a  distortion  of  truth  to  deceive  even  our  kindly 
old  doctor.  But  he  asked  no  further  question,  seeing  that 
it  was  a  point  of  honour.  The  matter,  however,  forced  an 
estrangement  between  myself  and  some  of  my  fellows 
that  I  realized  afterwards  was  excellent  for  me.  Forthwith 
we  moved  my  friend's  desk  into  my  corner  of  the  room 
which  was  always  safe  when  I  was  around,  though  later 
some  practices  of  the  others  to  which  I  took  exception 
led  to  a  combination  which  I  thought  of  then  as  that 
made  by  the  Jews  to  catch  Paul,  and  which  I  foiled  in  a 
similar  way,  watchfully  eluding  them  when  they  were  in 
numbers  together,  but  always  ready  to  meet  one  or  two 
at  a  time.  The  fact  that  I  had  just  taken  up  "racquets" 


32  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

impressed  it  on  my  memory,  for  considering  the  class- 
room temporarily  unsafe  for  "prep"  work,  I  used  that 
building  as  a  convenient  refuge  for  necessary  study.  It 
would  have  been  far  better  to  have  fought  it  out  and 
taken,  if  unavoidable,  whatever  came  to  me  —  had  it 
been  anywhere  else  I  should  probably  have  done  so.  But 
the  class-room  was  a  close  corporation  for  Foundation 
scholars,  and  not  one  of  my  chums  had  access  to  it  to  see 
fair  play. 

My  friendship  for  "Mad  G."  was  largely  tempered  by 
my  own  love  for  anything  athletic,  and  eccentricities 
paid  a  very  heavy  price  among  all  boys.  Thus,  though  I 
was  glad  to  lend  my  protection  to  my  friend,  we  never 
went  about  together  —  as  such  boys  as  he  always  Uved 
the  life  of  hermits  in  the  midst  of  the  crowd.  I  well  re- 
member one  other  boy,  made  eccentric  by  his  peculiar 
face  and  an  unfortunate  impediment  of  speech.  No  such 
boy  should  have  been  sent  to  an  English  public  school 
as  it  was  in  my  day.  His  stutter  was  no  ordinary  one,  for 
it  consisted,  not  in  repeating  the  first  letter  or  syllable, 
but  in  blowing  out  both  cheeks  like  a  balloon,  and  mak- 
ing noises  which  resembled  a  back-firing  motor  engine. 
It  was  the  custom  of  our  form  master  to  make  us  say 
our  repetition  by  each  boy  taking  one  line,  the  last  round 
being  always  "expressed"  —  that  is,  unless  you  started 
instantly  the  boy  above  you  finished,  the  next  boy  be- 
gan, and  took  your  place.  I  can  still  see  and  hear  the  un- 
fortunate J.  getting  up  steam  for  his  line  four  or  five 
boys  ahead  of  time,  so  that  he  might  explode  at  the  right 
moment,  which  desirable  end,  however,  he  but  very 
rarely  accomplished,  and  never  catching  up,  he  used, 
like  the  man  in  the  parable,  always  to  "begin  with  shame 
to  take  the  lowest  place."  Sometimes  the  master  in  a 
merciful  mood  allowed  us  to  write  the  line;  but  that  was 


SCHOOL  LIFE  33 

risky,  for  it  was  considered  no  disgrace  to  circumvent 
him,  and  mider  those  circmnstances  it  was  very  easy  for 
the  next  boy  to  write  his  own  and  then  yom's,  and  pass 
it  along  if  he  saw  you  were  in  trouble. 

There  was,  and  I  think  with  some  reason,  a  pride 
among  the  boys  on  their  appearance  on  certain  occasions. 
It  went  by  the  name  of  "good  form."  Thus  on  Sundays 
at  morning  chapel,  we  always  wore  a  button-hole  flower 
if  we  could.  My  dear  mother  used  to  post  me  along  a 
little  box  of  flowers  every  week  —  nor  was  it  by  any 
means  wasted  energy,  for  not  only  did  the  love  for 
flowers  become  a  hobby  and  a  custom  with  many  of  us 
through  life,  and  a  help  to  steer  clear  of  sloppiness  in 
appearance,  but  it  was  a  habit  quite  likely  to  spread  to 
the  soul.  But  beyond  that,  the  picture  of  my  dear  mother, 
with  the  thousand  worries  of  a  large  school  of  small 
boys  on  her  hands,  finding  time  to  gather,  pack,  address, 
and  post  each  week  with  her  own  hands  so  fleeting  and 
inessential  a  token  of  her  love,  has  a  thousand  times 
arisen  to  my  memory,  and  led  me  to  consider  some  ap- 
parently quite  unnecessary  little  labour  of  love  as  being 
well  worth  the  time  and  trouble.  It  is  these  deeds  of  love 
—  not  words,  however  touching  —  that  never  fade  from 
the  soul,  and  to  the  last  make  their  appeal  to  the  wander- 
ing boy  to  "arise"  and  do  things. 

Like  everything  else  this  fastidiousness  can  be  over- 
done, and  I  remember  once  a  boy's  legal  guardian  show- 
ing me  a  bill  for  a  hundred  pounds  sterling  that  his  ward 
had  incurred  in  a  single  term  for  cut  flowers.  Yet  "form" 
is  a  part  of  the  life  of  all  Enghsh  schools,  and  the  boys 
think  much  more  of  it  than  sin.  At  Harrow  you  may  not 
walk  in  the  middle  of  the  road  as  a  freshman;  and  in 
American  schools  and  universities,  such  regulations  as 
the  "Fence"  laws  at  Yale  show  that  they  have  emulated 


34  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  even  surpassed  us  in  these.  It  was,  however,  a  very 
potent  influence,  and  we  were  always  ridiculously  sensi- 
tive about  breaches  of  it.  Thus,  on  a  certain  prize  day 
my  friend  "Mad  G.,"  having  singularly  distinguished 
himself  in  his  studies,  his  parents  came  all  the  way  from 
their  home,  at  great  expense  to  themselves,  to  see  their 
beloved  and  only  son  honoured.  I  presume  that,  though 
wild  horses  would  not  drag  anything  out  of  the  boy  at 
school,  he  had  communicated  to  them  the  details  of 
some  little  service  rendered.  For  to  my  horror  I  was 
stopped  by  his  mother,  whom  I  subsequently  learned  to 
love  and  honour  above  most  people,  and  actually  kissed 
while  walking  in  the  open  quad  —  strutting  like  a  pea- 
cock, I  suppose,  for  I  remember  feeling  as  if  the  bottom 
had  suddenly  fallen  out  of  the  earth.  The  sequel,  how- 
ever, was  an  invitation  to  visit  their  home  in  North 
Wales  for  the  Christmas  holidays,  where  there  was  rough 
shooting,  —  the  only  kind  I  really  cared  for,  —  boating, 
rock-climbing,  bathing,  and  the  companionship  of  as 
lively  a  family  as  it  was  possible  to  meet  anywhere. 
Many  a  holiday  afterwards  we  shared  together,  and  the 
kindness  showered  upon  me  I  shall  never  be  able  to  for- 
get, or,  alas,  return;  for  my  dear  friend  "Mad  G."  has 
long  ago  gone  to  his  rest,  and  so  have  both  his  parents, 
whom  I  loved  almost  as  my  own. 

Another  thing  for  which  I  have  much  to  thank  my 
parents  is  the  interest  which  they  encouraged  me  to  take 
in  the  collecting  and  study  of  natural  objects.  We  were 
taught  that  the  only  excuse  that  made  the  taking  of 
animal  life  honourable  was  for  some  useful  purpose,  like 
food  or  study  or  self-preservation.  Several  cases  of  birds 
stuffed  and  set  up  when  we' were  fourteen  and  sixteen 
years  of  age  still  adorn  the  old  house.  Every  bit  had  to 
be  done  by  ourselves,  my  brother  making  the  cases,  and 


SCHOOL  LIFE  35 

I  the  rock  work  and  taxidermy.  The  hammering-up  of 
sandstone  and  granite;  to  cover  the  glue-soaked  brown 
paper  that  we  moulded  into  rocks,  satisfied  my  keenest 
instinct  for  making  messes,  and  only  the  patience  of  the 
old-time  domestics  would  have  "stood  for  it."  My 
brother  specialized  in  birds'  eggs,  and  I  in  butterflies  and 
moths.  Later  we  added  seaweeds,  shells,  and  flowers. 
Some  of  our  collections  have  been  dissipated;  and  though 
we  have  not  a  really  scientific  acquaintance  with  either 
of  these  kingdoms,  we  acquired  a  "hail-fellow-well-met" 
familiarity  with  all  of  them,  which  has  enlivened  many 
a  day  in  many  parts  of  the  world  as  we  have  journeyed 
through  life.  Moreover,  though  purchased  pictures  have 
other  values,  the  old  cases  set  on  the  walls  of  one's  den 
bring  back  memories  that  are  the  joy  and  solace  of  many 
idle  moments  later  in  fife  —  each  rarer  egg,  each  extra 
butterfly  picturing  some  day  or  place  of  keen  triumph, 
otherwise  long  since  forgotten.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a 
convolvulus  hawk  father  found  killed  on  a  mountain  in 
Switzerland;  there  an  Apollo  I  caught  in  the  Pyrenees; 
here  a  "red  burret"  with  "five  eyes"  captured  as  we 
raced  through  the  bracken  on  Clifton  Downs;  and  there 
are  "purple  emperors"  wired  down  to  "meat"  baits  on 
the  Surrey  Downs. 

Many  a  night  at  school  have  I  stolen  into  the  great 
forest,  my  butterfly  net  under  my  coat,  to  try  and  add 
a  new  specimen  to  my  hoard.  We  were  always  supplied 
with  good  "key-books,"  so  that  we  should  be  able  to 
identify  our  specimens,  and  also  to  search  for  others 
more  intelligently.  One  value  of  my  own  specialty  was 
that  for  the  moths  it  demanded  going  out  in  the  night, 
and  the  thrills  of  out  of  doors  in  the  beautiful  summer 
evenings,  when  others  were  "fugging"  in  the  house  or 
had  gone  to  bed,  used  actually  to  make  me  dance  around 


36  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

on  the  grass.  The  dark  lantern,  the  sugaring  of  the  tree 
stems  with  intoxicating  potions,  and  the  subsequent  ex- 
citement of  searching  for  specimens,  fascinated  me  ut- 
terly. Our  breeding  from  the  egg,  through  the  cater- 
pillar stage,  taught  us  many  things  without  our  knowing 
that  we  were  learning. 

One  of  our  holidays  was  memorable,  because  as  soon 
as  our  parents  left  we  invited  my  friend  and  two  sisters 
as  well  to  come  and  stay  with  us.  They  came,  fully  ex- 
pecting that  mother  had  asked  them,  but  were  good 
enough  sports  to  stay  when  they  found  it  was  only  us 
two  boys.  They  greatly  added  to  the  enjoyment  of  the 
days,  and  if  they  had  not  been  such  inveterate  home 
letter- writers  —  a  habit  of  which  we  were  very  con- 
temptuous —  it  would  have  saved  us  boys  much  good- 
humoured  teasing  afterwards,  for  the  matron  would 
have  been  mum  and  no  one  the  wiser. 


CHAPTER  III 

EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON 

In  1883  my  father  became  anxious  to  give  up  teaching 
boys  and  to  confine  himself  more  exclusively  to  the  work 
of  a  clergyman.  With  this  in  view  he  contemplated  mov- 
ing to  London  where  he  had  been  offered  the  chaplaincy 
of  the  huge  London  Hospital.  I  remember  his  talking 
it  over  with  me,  and  then  asking  if  I  had  any  idea 
what  I  wanted  to  do  in  life.  It  came  to  me  as  a  new  conun- 
drum. It  had  never  occurred  to  me  to  look  forward 
to  a  profession;  except  that  I  knew  that  the  heads  of 
tigers,  deer,  and  all  sorts  of  trophies  of  the  chase  which 
adorned  our  house  came  from  soldier  uncles  and  others 
who  hunted  them  in  India,  and  I  had  always  thought 
that  their  occupation  would  suit  my  taste  admirably.  It 
never  dawned  on  me  that  I  would  have  to  earn  my  bread 
and  butter  —  that  had  always  come  along.  Moreover,  I 
had  never  seen  real  poverty  in  others,  for  all  the  fisher- 
folk  in  our  village  seemed  to  have  enough.  I  hated  dress 
and  frills,  and  envied  no  one.  At  school,  and  on  the  Ri- 
viera, and  even  in  Wales,  I  had  never  noticed  any  want. 
It  is  true  that  a  number  of  dear  old  ladies  from  the  village 
came  in  the  winter  months  to  our  house  once  or  twice  a 
week  to  get  soup.  They  used  to  sit  in  the  back  hall,  each 
with  a  round  tin  can  with  a  bucket  handle.  These  were 
filled  with  hot  broth,  and  the  old  ladies  were  given  a 
repast  as  well  before  leaving.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  very 
seldom  actually  saw  them,  for  that  part  of  the  house 
was  cut  off  entirely  by  large  double  green-baize  covered 
doors.  But  I  often  knew  that  they  must  have  been  there, 
because  our  Skye  terrier,  though  fed  to  overflowing. 


S8  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

usually  attended  these  seances,  and  I  presume,  while 
the  old  ladies  were  occupied  with  lunch,  sampled  the 
cans  of  soup  that  stood  in  rows  along  the  floor.  He  used 
to  come  along  with  dripping  whiskers  which  betrayed 
his  excursion,  and  the  look  of  a  connoisseur  in  his  large 
round  eyes  —  as  if  he  were  certifying  that  justice  had 
been  done  once  more  in  the  kitchen. 

While  I  was  in  France  the  mother  of  my  best  chum  in 
school  had  been  passing  through  Marseilles  on  her  way 
home  from  India,  and  had  most  kindly  taken  me  on  a 
jolly  trip  to  Aries,  Avignon,  and  other  historical  places. 
She  was  the  wife  of  a  famous  missionary  in  India.  She 
spoke  eight  languages  fluently,  including  Arabic,  and 
was  a  perfect  "vade  mecum"  of  interesting  information 
which  she  well  knew  how  to  impart.  She  had  known  my 
mother's  family  all  her  life,  they  being  Anglo-Indians  in 
the  army  service. 

About  the  time  of  my  father's  question,  my  friend's 
mother  was  staying  in  Chester  with  her  brother-in-law, 
the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Denbighshire.  It  was  decided 
that  as  she  was  a  citizeness  of  the  world,  no  one  could 
suggest  better  for  what  profession  my  peculiar  talents 
fitted  me.  The  interview  I  have  long  ago  forgotten,  but 
I  recall  coming  home  with  a  confused  idea  that  tiger 
hunting  would  not  support  me,  and  that  she  thought  I 
ought  to  become  a  clergyman,  though  it  had  no  attrac- 
tion for  me,  and  I  decided  against  it. 

None  of  our  family  on  either  side,  so  far  as  I  can  find 
out,  had  ever  practised  medicine.  My  own  experience  of 
doctors  had  been  rather  a  chequered  one,  but  at  my 
father's  suggestion  I  gladly  went  up  and  discussed  the 
matter  with  our  country  family  doctor.  He  was  a  fine 
man,  and  we  boys  were  very  fond  of  him  and  his  family, 
his  daughter  being  our  best  girl  friend  near  by.  He  had 


EAELY  WORK  IN  LONDON  39 

an  enormous  practice,  in  which  he  was  eminently  suc- 
cessful. The  number  of  horses  he  kept,  and  the  miles  he 
covered  with  them,  were  phenomenal  in  my  mind.  He 
had  always  a  kind  word  for  every  one,  and  never  gave 
us  boys  away,  though  he  must  have  known  many  of  our 
pranks  played  in  our  parents'  absence.  The  only  remain- 
ing memory  of  that  visit  was  that  the  old  doctor  brought 
down  from  one  of  his  shelves  a  large  jar,  out  of  which  he 
produced  a  pickled  human  brain.  I  was  thrilled  with  en- 
tirely new  emotions.  I  had  never  thought  of  man's  body 
as  a  machine.  That  this  weird,  white,  puckered-up  mass 
could  be  the  producer  or  transmitter  of  all  that  made 
man,  that  it  controlled  our  physical  strength  and  growth, 
and  our  responses  to  life,  that  it  made  one  into  "Mad  G." 
and  another  into  me  —  why,  it  was  absolutely  marvel- 
lous. It  attracted  me  as  did  the  gramophone,  the  camera, 
the  automobile. 

My  father  saw  at  once  on  my  return  that  I  had  found 
my  real  interest,  and  put  before  me  two  alternative  plans, 
one  to  go  to  Oxford,  where  my  brother  had  just  entered, 
or  to  join  him  in  London  and  take  up  work  in  the  Lon- 
don Hospital  and  University,  preparatory  to  going  in  for 
medicine.  I  chose  the  latter  at  once  —  a  decision  I  have 
never  regretted.  I  ought  to  say  that  business  as  a  career 
was  not  suggested.  In  England,  especially  in  those  days, 
these  things  were  more  or  less  hereditary.  My  forbears 
were  all  fighters  or  educators,  except  for  an  occasional 
statesman  or  banker.  Probably  there  is  some  advantage 
in  this  plan. 

The  school  had  been  leased  for  a  period  of  seven  years 
to  a  very  delightful  successor,  it  being  rightly  supposed 
that  after  that  time  my  brother  would  wish  to  assume 
the  responsibility. 

Some  of  the  subjects  for  the  London  matriculation 


40  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

were  quite  new  to  me,  especially  "English."  But  with 
the  fresh  incentive  and  new  vision  of  responsibihty  I  set 
to  work  with  a  will,  and  soon  had  mastered  the  ten  re- 
quired subjects  sufficiently  to  pass  the  examination  with 
credit.  But  I  must  say  here  that  Professor  Huxley's  criti- 
cisms of  English  public  school  teaching  of  that  period 
were  none  too  stringent.  I  wish  with  all  my  heart  that 
others  had  spoken  out  as  bravely,  for  in  those  days  that 
wonderful  man  was  held  up  to  our  scorn  as  an  atheist  and 
iconoclast.  He  was,  however,  perfectly  right.  We  spent 
years  of  life  and  heaps  of  money  on  our  education,  and 
came  out  knowing  nothing  to  fit  us  for  life,  except  that 
which  we  picked  up  incidentally. 

I  now  followed  my  father  to  London,  and  found  every 
subject  except  my  chemistry  entirely  new.  I  was  not 
familiar  with  one  word  of  botany,  zoology,  physics,  phys- 
iology, orlcomparative  anatomy.  About  the  universe 
which  I  inhabited  I  knew  as  httle  as  I  did  about  cimei- 
form  writings.  Except  for  my  mathematics  and  a  mere 
modicum  of  chemistry  I  had  nothing  on  which  to  base 
my  new  work;  and  students  coming  from  Government 
free  schools,  or  almost  anywhere,  had  a  great  advantage 
over  men  of  my  previous  education;  I  did  not  even  know 
how  to  study  wisely.  Again,  as  Huxley  showed,  medical 
education  in  London  was  so  divided,  there  being  no 
teaching  university,  that  the  curriculum  was  ridiculously 
inadequate.  There  were  still  being  foisted  upon  the  world 
far  too  many  medical  men  of  the  type  of  Bob  Sawyer. 

There  were  fourteen  hospitals  in  London  to  which 
medical  schools  were  attached.  Our  hospital  was  the 
largest  in  the  British  Isles,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  poor- 
est population  in  England,  being  located  in  the  famous 
Whitechapel  Road,  and  surrounded  by  all  the  purlieus 
of  the  East  End  of  the  great  city.  Patients  came  from 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  41 

Tilbury  Docks  to  Billingsgate  Market,  and  all  the  river 
haunts  between;  from  Shadwell,  Deptford,  Wapping, 
Poplar,  from  Petticoat  Lane  and  Radcliffe  Highway, 
made  famous  by  crime  and  by  Charles  Dickens.  They 
came  from  Bethnal  Green,  where  once  queens  had  their 
courts,  now  the  squalid  and  crowded  home  of  poverty; 
from  Stratford  and  Bow,  and  a  hundred  other  slums. 

The  hospital  had  some  nine  hundred  beds,  which  were 
always  so  full  that  the  last  surgeon  admitting  to  his 
wards  constantly  found  himself  with  extra  beds  poked 
in  between  the  regulation  number  through  sheer  neces- 
sity. It  afforded  an  unrivalled  field  for  chnical  experience 
and  practical  teaching.  In  my  day,  however,  owing  to  its 
position  in  London,  and  the  fact  that  its  school  was  only 
just  emerging  from  primeval  chaos,  it  attracted  very  few 
indeed  of  the  medical  students  from  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, who  are  obhged  to  come  to  London  for  their  last 
two  or  three  years'  hospital  work  —  the  scope  in  those 
small  university  towns  being  decidedly  limited. 

Looking  back  I  am  grateful  to  my  alma  mater,  and 
have  that  real  affection  for  her  that  every  loyal  son 
should  have.  But  even  that  does  not  conceal  from  me 
how  poor  a  teaching  estabhshment  it  was.  Those  who 
had  natural  genius,  and  the  advantages  of  previous 
scientific  training,  who  were  sons  of  medical  men,  or 
had  served  apprenticeships  to  them,  need  not  have  suf- 
fered so  much  through  its  utter  inefficiency.  But  men 
in  my  position  suffered  quite  unconsciously  a  terrible 
handicap,  and  it  was  only  the  influences  for  which  I  had 
nothing  whatever  to  thank  the  hospital  that  saved  me 
from  the  catastrophes  which  overtook  so  many  who 
started  with  me. 

To  begin  with,  there  was  no  supervision  of  our  lives 
whatever.  We  were  flung  into  a  coarse  and  evil  environ- 


42  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

ment,  among  men  who  too  often  took  pride  in  their 
shame,  just  to  sink  or  swim.  Not  one  soul  cared  which  you 
did.  I  can  still  remember  numerous  cases  where  it  simply 
meant  that  men  paid  quite  large  sums  for  the  privilege 
of  sending  the  sons  they  loved  direct  to  the  devil.  I 
recall  one  lad  whom  I  had  known  at  school.  His  father 
lavished  money  upon  him,  and  sincerely  believed  that 
his  son  was  doing  him  credit  and  would  soon  return  to 
share  his  large  practice,  and  bring  to  it  all  the  many 
new  advances  he  had  learned.  The  reports  of  examin- 
ations successfully  passed  he  fully  accepted;  and  the 
non-return  of  his  son  at  vacation  times  he  put  down  to 
professional  zeal.  It  was  not  till  the  time  came  for  the 
boy  to  get  his  degree  and  return  that  the  father  discov- 
ered that  he  had  lived  exactly  the  life  of  the  prodigal 
in  the  parable,  and  had  neither  attended  college  nor  at- 
tempted a  single  examination  of  any  kind  whatever.  It 
broke  the  father's  heart  and  he  died. 

Examinations  for  degrees  were  held  by  the  London 
University,  or  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  and  Sur- 
geons, never  by  the  hospital  schools.  These  were  practi- 
cally race  committees;  they  did  no  teaching,  but  when 
you  had  done  certain  things,  they  allowed  you  to  come 
up  and  be  examined,  and  if  you  got  through  a  written 
and  "viva  voce"  examination  you  were  inflicted  on  an 
unsuspecting  public  "qualified  to  kill"  —  often  only  too 
literally  so. 

It  is  obvious  on  the  face  of  it  that  this  could  be  no 
proper  criterion  for  so  important  a  decision  as  to  qualifi- 
cations; special  crammers  studied  the  examiners,  their 
questions,  and  their  teachings,  and  luck  had  a  great  deal 
to  do  with  success.  While  some  men  never  did  them- 
selves justice  in  examinations,  others  were  exactly  the 
reverse.  Thus  I  can  remember  one  resident  accoucheur 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  43 

being  "ploughed,"  as  we  called  it,  in  his  special  subject, 
obstetrics  —  and  men  to  whom  you  would  n't  trust  your 
cat  getting  through  with  flying  colours. 

Of  the  things  to  be  done:  First  you  had  to  be  signed 
up  for  attending  courses  of  lectures  on  certain  subjects. 
This  was  simply  a  matter  of  tipping  the  beadle,  who 
marked  you  off.  I  personally  attended  only  two  botany 
lectures  during  the  whole  course.  At  the  first  some  prac- 
tical joker  had  spilled  a  solution  of  carbon  bisulphide  all 
over  the  professor's  platform,  and  the  smell  was  so  in- 
tolerable that  the  lecture  was  prorogued.  At  the  second, 
some  wag  let  loose  a  couple  of  pigeons,  whereupon  every 
one  started  either  to  capture  them  or  stir  them  up  with 
pea-shooters.  The  professor  said,  "Gentlemen,  if  you  do 
not  wish  to  learn,  you  are  at  liberty  to  leave."  The  entire 
class  walked  out.  The  insignificant  sum  of  two  and  six- 
pence secured  me  my  sign-up  for  the  remainder  of  the 
course. 

Materia  medica  was  almost  identical;  and  while  we 
had  better  fortune  with  physiology,  no  experience  and  no 
apparatus  for  verifying  its  teachings  were  ever  shown  us. 

Our  chemistry  professor  was  a  very  clever  man,  but 
extremely  eccentric,  and  his  class  was  pandemonium.  I 
have  seen  him  so  frequently  pelted  with  peas,  when  his 
head  was  turned,  as  to  force  him  to  leave  the  amphi- 
theatre in  despair.  I  well  remember  also  an  impopular 
student  being  pushed  down  from  the  top  row  almost  on 
to  the  experiment  table. 

There  was  practically  no  histology  taught,  and  little 
or  no  pathology.  Almost  every  bit  of  the  microscope 
which  I  did  was  learned  on  my  own  instrument  at  home. 
Anatomy,  however,  we  were  well  taught  in  the  dissect- 
ing-room, where  we  could  easily  obtain  all  the  work  we 
needed.  But  not  till  Sir  Frederick  Treves  became  our 


V 


44  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

lecturer  in  anatomy  and  surgery  was  it  worth  while  do- 
ing more  than  pay  the  necessary  sum  to  get  signed  up. 

In  the  second  place  we  had  to  attend  in  the  dispensary, 
actually  to  handle  drugs  and  learn  about  them  —  an 
admirable  rule.  Personally  I  went  once,  fooled  around 
making  egg-nogg,  and  arranged  with  a  considerate  drug- 
gist to  do  the  rest  that  was  necessary.  Yet  I  satisfied  the 
examiners  at  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons, 
those  of  the  London  University  at  the  examinations  for 
Bachelor  of  Medicine  —  the  only  ones  which  they  gave 
which  carried  questions  in  any  of  these  subjects. 

In  the  athletic  Hfe  of  the  University,  however,  I  took 
great  interest,  and  was  secretary  in  succession  of  the 
cricket,  football,  and  rowing  clubs.  I  helped  remove  the 
latter  from  the  old  river  Lea  to  the  Thames,  to  raise  the 
inter-hospital  rowing  championship  and  start  the  united 
hospitals'  rowing  club.  I  found  time  to  row  in  the  inter- 
hospital  race  for  two  years  and  to  play  on  the  football 
team  in  the  two  years  of  which  we  won  the  inter- 
hospital  football  cup.  A  few  times  I  played  with  the 
united  hospitals'  team;  but  I  found  that  their  ways  were 
not  mine,  as  I  had  been  taught  to  despise  alcohol  a&  a 
beverage  and  to  respect  all  kinds  of  womanhood.  For 
three  years  I  played  regularly  for  Richmond  —  the  best 
of  the  London  clubs  at  the  time  —  and  subsequently  for 
Oxford,  being  put  on  the  team  the  only  term  I  was  in 
residence.  I  also  threw  the  hammer  for  the  hospital  in 
the  united  hospitals'  sports,  winning  second  place  for 
two  years.  Indeed,  athletics  in  some  form  occupied 
every  moment  of  my  spare  time. 

It  was  in  my  second  year,  1885,  that  returning  from 
an  out-patient  case  one  night,  I  turned  into  a  large  tent 
erected  in  a  purlieu  of  Shadwell,  the  district  to  which  I 
happened  to  have  been  called.  It  proved  to  be  an  evangel- 


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EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  45 

istic  meeting  of  the  then  famous  Moody  and  Sankey.  It 
was  so  new  to  me  that  when  a  tedious  prayer-bore  began 
with  a  long  oration,  I  started  to  leave.  Suddenly  the 
leader,  whom  I  learned  afterwards  was  D.  L.  Moody, 
called  out  to  the  audience,  "Let  us  sing  a  hymn  while 
our  brother  finishes  his  prayer."  His  practicality  inter- 
ested me,  and  I  stayed  the  service  out.  When  eventually 
I  left,  it  was  with  a  determination  either  to  make  reli- 
gion a  real  effort  to  do  as  I  thought  Christ  would  do  in 
my  place  as  a  doctor,  or  frankly  abandon  it.  That  could 
only  have  one  issue  while  I  still  lived  with  a  mother  like 
mine.  For  she  had  always  been  my  ideal  of  unselfish  love. 
So  I  decided  to  make  the  attempt,  and  later  went  down 
to  hear  the  brothers  J.  E.  and  C.  T.  Studd  speak  at  some 
subsidiary  meeting  of  the  Moody  campaign.  They  were 
natural  athletes,  and  I  felt  that  I  could  listen  to  them. 
I  could  not  have  listened  to  a  sensuous-looking  man,  a 
man  who  was  not  a  master  of  his  own  body,  any  more 
than  I  could  to  a  precentor,  who  coming  to  sing  the 
prayers  at  college  chapel  dedication,  I  saw  get  drunk  on 
sherry  which  he  abstracted  from  the  banquet  table  just 
before  the  service.  Never  shall  I  forget,  at  the  meeting 
of  the  Studd  brothers,  the  audience  being  asked  to  stand 
up  if  they  intended  to  try  and  follow  Christ.  It  appeared 
a  very  sensible  question  to  me,  but  I  was  amazed  how 
hard  I  found  it  to  stand  up.  At  last  one  boy,  out  of 
a  hundred  or  more  in  sailor  rig,  from  an  industrial  or 
reformatory  ship  on  the  Thames,  suddenly  rose.  It 
seemed  to  me  such  a  wonderfully  courageous  act  —  for 
I  knew  perfectly  what  it  would  mean  to  him  —  that  I 
immediately  found  myself  on  my  feet,  and  went  out 
feeling  that  I  had  crossed  the  Rubicon,  and  must  do 
something  to  prove  it. 

We  were  Church  of  England  people,  and  I  always  at- 


46  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

tended  service  with  my  mother  at  an  Episcopal  church 
of  the  evangehcal  type.  At  her  suggestion  I  asked  the 
minister  if  I  could  in  any  way  help.  He  offered  me  a  class 
of  small  boys  in  his  Sunday  School,  which  I  accepted 
with  much  hesitation.  The  boys,  derived  from  houses  in 
the  neighbourhood,  were  as  smart  as  any  I  have  known. 
With  every  faculty  sharpened  by  the  competition  of  the 
street,  they  so  tried  my  patience  with  their  pranks  that 
I  often  wondered  what  strange  attraction  induced  them 
to  come  at  all.  The  school  and  church  were  the  property 
of  a  society  known  by  the  uninviting  title  of  the  "Epis- 
copal Society  for  the  promotion  of  Christianity  among 
the  Jews."  It  owned  a  large  court,  shut  off  from  the  road 
by  high  gates,  around  which  stood  about  a  dozen  houses 
—  with  the  church  facing  the  gates  at  one  end  of  a  pretty 
avenue  of  trees.  It  was  an  oasis  in  the  desert  of  that 
dismal  region.  It  possessed  also  an  industrial  institution 
for  helping  its  converts  to  make  a  living,  when  driven 
out  of  their  own  homes;  and  its  main  work  was  carried 
on  for  the  most  part  by  superannuated  missionaries.  One 
was  from  Bagdad,  I  remember,  and  one  from  Palestine, 
both  themselves  Jews  by  extraction.  These  missionaries 
were  paid  such  miserable  salaries  that  in  their  old  age 
they  were  always  left  very  poor. 

One  instance  of  a  baptism  I  have  never  forgotten.  I 
was  then  living  in  the  court,  having  hired  a  nice  separate 
house  under  the  trees  after  my  father  had  died  and  my 
mother  had  moved  to  Hampstead.  In  such  a  district  the 
house  was  a  Godsend.  One  Sunday  I  was  strolling  in 
the  court  when  the  clergyman  came  rushing  out  of  the 
church  and  called  to  me  in  great  excitement,  "The 
church  is  full  of  Jews.  They  are  going  to  carry  off  Abra- 
ham. Can't  you  go  in  and  help  while  I  fetch  the  police?  " 
My  friend  and  I  therefore  rushed  in  as  directed  to  a 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  47 

narrow  alleyway  between  high  box  pews  which  led  into 
the  vestry,  into  which  "Abraham"  had  been  spirited. 
The  door  being  shut  and  our  backs  put  to  it,  it  was  a 
very  easy  matter  to  hold  back  the  crowd,  who  probably 
supposed  at  first  that  we  were  leading  the  abduction 
party.  There  being  only  room  for  two  to  come  on  at  once, 
"those  behind  cried  forward,  and  those  in  front  back," 
till  after  very  little  blood  spilt,  we  heard  the  police  in  the 
church,  and  the  crowd  at  once  took  to  flight.  I  regret  to 
say  that  we  expedited  the  rear-guard  by  football  rather 
than  strictly  Christian  methods.  His  friends  then  charged 
Abraham  with  theft,  expecting  to  get  him  out  of  his 
place  of  refuge  and  then  trap  him,  as  we  were  told  they 
had  a  previous  convert.  We  therefore  accompanied  him 
personally  through  the  mean  streets,  both  to  and  fro, 
spoihng  for  more  fun.  But  they  displayed  more  discre- 
tion than  valour,  and  to  the  best  of  my  behef  he  escaped 
their  machinations. 

My  Simday-School  efforts  did  not  satisfy  me.  The 
boys  were  few,  and  I  failed  to  see  any  progress.  But  I 
had  resolved  that  I  would  do  no  work  on  Sundays  except 
for  others,  so  I  joined  a  young  Australian  of  my  class 
in  hospital  in  holding  services  on  Sunday  nights  in  half 
a  dozen  of  the  underground  lodging-houses  along  the 
Radcliffe  Highway.  He  was  a  good  musician,  so  he  pur- 
chased a  fine  little  portable  harmonium,  and  whatever 
else  the  lodgers  thought  of  us,  they  always  liked  the 
music.  We  used  to  meet  for  evening  tea  at  a  place  in  the 
famous  Highway  known  as  "The  Stranger's  Rest,"  out- 
side of  which  an  open-air  service  was  always  held  for  the 
sailors  wandering  up  and  down  the  docks.  At  these  a 
number  of  ladies  would  sing;  and  after  the  meetings  a 
certain  number  of  the  sailors  were  asked  to  come  in  and 
have  refreshments.  There  were  always  some  who  had 


48  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

spent  their  money  on  drink,  or  been  robbed,  or  were  out 
of  ships,  and  many  of  them  were  very  fine  men.  Some 
were  foreigners  —  so  much  so  that  a  bit  farther  down  the 
road  a  Norwegian  lady  carried  on  another  similar  work, 
especially  for  Scandinavians. 

A  single  story  will  illustrate  the  good  points  which 
some  of  these  men  displayed.  My  hospital  chief,  Sir 
Frederick  Treves,  had  operated  on  a  great  big  Norwegian, 
and  the  man  had  left  the  hospital  cured.  As  a  rule  such 
patients  do  not  even  know  the  name  of  their  surgeon. 
Some  three  weeks  later,  however,  this  man  called  at 
Sir  Frederick  Treves's  house  late  one  dark  night.  Having 
asked  if  he  were  the  surgeon  who  had  operated  on  him 
and  getting  a  reply  in  the  affirmative,  he  said  he  had 
come  to  return  thanks,  that  since  he  left  hospital  he  had 
been  wandering  about  without  a  penny  to  his  name,  wait- 
ing for  a  ship,  but  had  secured  a  place  on  that  day.  He 
proceeded  to  cut  out  from  the  upper  edge  of  his  trousers 
a  gold  Norwegian  five-kronen  piece  which  his  wife  had 
sewed  in  there  to  be  his  stand-by  in  case  of  absolute  need. 
He  had  been  so  hungry  that  he  had  been  tempted  to  use 
it,  but  now  had  come  to  present  it  as  a  token  of  gratitude 
—  upon  which  he  bowed  and  disappeared.  Sir  Frederick 
said  that  he  was  so  utterly  taken  aback  that  he  found 
himself  standing  in  the  hall,  holding  the  coin,  and  bowing 
his  visitor  out.  He  said  he  could  no  more  return  it  than 
you  could  offer  your  teacher  a  "tip,"  and  he  has  pre- 
served it  as  a  much-prized  possession. 

The  underground  lodging-house  work  did  me  lots  of 
good.  It  brought  me  into  touch  with  real  poverty  —  a 
very  graveyard  of  life  I  had  never  surmised.  The  den- 
izens of  those  miserable  haunts  were  men  from  almost 
every  rank  of  life.  They  were  shipwrecks  from  the  ocean 
of  humanity,  drifted  up  on  the  last  beach.  There  were 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  49 

large  open  fireplaces  in  the  dens,  over  which  those  who 
had  any  food  cooked  it.  Often  while  the  other  doctor  or 
I  was  holding  services,  one  of  us  would  have  to  sit  down 
on  some  drunken  man  to  keep  him  from  making  the 
proceedings  impossible;  but  there  was  always  a  modicum 
who  gathered  around  and  really  enjoyed  the  singing. 

We  soon  found  that  there  were  no  depths  of  con- 
temptible treachery  which  some  among  these  new  ac- 
quaintances would  not  attempt.  We  became  gradually 
hardened  to  the  piteous  tales  of  ill  luck,  of  malignant  per- 
secution, and  of  purely  temporary  embarrassments,  and 
learned  soon  to  leave  behind  us  purses,  and  watches, 
and  anything  else  of  value,  and  to  keep  some  specially 
worn  clothing  for  this  service.  ^ 

There  was  always  a  narrow  passage  from  the  front 
door  to  the  staircase  which  led  down  into  those  huge 
underground  basements.  The  guardians  had  a  room 
inside  the  door,  with  a  ticket  window,  where  they  took 
five  or  possibly  eight  cents  from  the  boarders  for  their 
night's  lodging.  At  about  eleven  o'clock  a  "chucker  out'* 
would  go  down  and  clear  out  all  the  gentlemen  who  had 
not  paid  in  advance  for  the  night.  This  was  always  a 
very  melancholy  period  of  the  evening,  and  in  spite  of 
our  hardened  hearts,  we  always  had  a  score  against  us 
there.  That,  however,  had  to  be  given  in  person,  for  there 
were  plenty  among  our  audiences  who  had  taken  special 
courses  in  imitative  calligraphy.  I.O.U.'s  on  odd  bits  of 
paper  were  a  menace  to  our  banking  accounts  till  we 
sorrowfully  abandoned  that  convenient  way  of  helping 
often  a  really  deserving  case. 

In  those  houses,  somewhat  to  my  astonishment,  we 
never  once  received  any  physical  opposition.  We  knew 
that  some  considered  us  harmless  and  gullible  imbeciles; 
but  the  great  majority  were  still  able  to  see  that  it  was 


50  A  LABEADOR  DOCTOR 

an  attempt,  however  poor,  to  help  them.  Drink,  of  course, 
was  the  chief  cause  of  the  downfall  of  most;  but  as  I  have 
already  said,  there  were  cases  of  genuine,  imdeserved 
poverty  —  like  our  sailor  friend,  overtaken  with  sickness 
in  a  foreign  port.  We  induced  some  to  sign  the  pledge 
and  to  keep  it,  if  only  temporarily,  but  I  think  that  we 
ourselves  got  most  out  of  the  work,  both  in  pleasure  and 
uphft.  I  recall  one  clergyman,  one  doctor,  and  many  men 
from  the  business  world  and  clerk's  life  in  the  flotsam 
and  jetsam. 

One  poor  creature,  in  the  last  stage  of  poverty  and 
dirt,  proved  to  be  an  honours  man  in  Oxford.  We  looked 
up  his  record  in  the  University.  He  assured  us  that  he 
intended  to  begin  again  a  new  life,  and  we  agreed  to  help 
start  him.  We  took  him  to  a  respectable,  temperance 
lodging-house,  paid  for  a  bed,  a  bath,  and  a  supper,  and 
purchased  a  good  second-hand  outfit  of  clothing  for  him. 
We  were  wise  enough  only  to  give  this  to  him  after  we 
had  taken  away  his  own  while  he  was  having  a  bath  in 
the  tub.  We  did  not  give  him  a  penny  of  money,  fearing 
his  lack  of  control.  Next  morning,  however,  when  we 
went  for  him,  he  was  gone  —  no  one  knew  where.  We 
had  the  neighbouring  saloons  searched,  and  soon  got 
track  of  him.  Some  "friend"  in  the  temperance  house 
had  given  him  sixpence.  The  barman  offered  him  the 
whiskey;  his  hands  trembled  so  that  he  could  not  lift  the 
glass  to  his  mouth,  and  the  barman  kindly  poured  it 
down  his  throat.  We  never  saw  him  again. 

In  this  lodging-house  work  a  friend,  now  a  well-known 
artist  and  successful  business  man,  often  joined  us  two 
doctors. 

My  growing  experience  had  shown  me  that  there  was 
a  better  way  to  the  hearts  of  my  Sunday-School  boys 
than  merely  talking  to  them.  Like  myself,  they  wor- 


EAELY  WORK  IN  LONDON  51 

shipped  the  athlete,  whether  he  were  a  prize-fighter  or  a 
big  football  player.  There  were  no  Y.M.C.A.'s  or  other 
places  for  them  to  get  any  physical  culture,  so  we  ar- 
ranged to  clear  our  dining-room  every  Saturday  evening, 
and  give  boxing  lessons  and  parallel-bar  work :  the  ceiling 
was  too  low  for  the  horizontal.  The  transformation  of  the 
room  was  easily  accomplished.  The  furniture  was  very 
primitive,  largely  our  own  construction,  and  we  could 
throw  out  through  the  window  every  scrap  of  it  except 
the  table,  which  was  soon  "adapted."  We  also  put  up 
a  quoit  pitch  in  our  garden. 

This  is  no  place  to  discuss  the  spiritual  influences  of 
the  "noble  art  of  boxing."  Personally  I  have  always  be- 
lieved in  its  value;  and  my  Sunday-School  class  soon 
learned  the  graces  of  fair  play,  how  to  take  defeat  and 
to  be  generous  in  victory.  They  began  at  once  bringing 
"pals"  whom  my  exegesis  on  Scripture  would  never  have 
lured  within  my  reach.  We  ourselves  began  to  look  for- 
ward to  Saturday  night  and  Sunday  afternoon  with  an 
entirely  new  joy.  We  all  learned  to  respect  and  so  to  love 
one  another  more  —  indeed,  lifelong  friendships  were 
developed  and  that  irrespective  of  our  hereditary  credal 
affiliations.  The  well-meaning  clergyman,  however,  could 
not  see  the  situation  in  that  light,  and  declining  all  in- 
vitations to  come  and  sample  an  evening's  fun  instead 
of  condemning  it  unheard,  or  I  should  say,  unseen,  he 
delivered  an  ultimatum  which  I  accepted  —  and  re- 
signed from  his  school. 

My  Australian  friend  was  at  that  time  wrestling  with 
a  real  ragged  school  on  the  Highway  on  Sunday  after- 
noons. The  poor  children  there  were  street  waifs  and  as 
wild  as  untamed  animals.  So,  being  temporarily  out  of  a 
Sunday  job,  I  consented  to  join  him. 

Our  school-room  this  time  owed  no  allegiance  to  any 


52  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

one  but  ourselves,  and  the  work  certainly  proved  a  real 
labour  of  love.  If  the  boys  were  allowed  in  a  minute  be- 
fore there  was  a  force  to  cope  with  them,  the  room  would 
be  wrecked.  Everything  movable  was  stolen  immediately 
opportunity  arose.  Boys  turned  out  or  locked  out  during 
session  would  climb  to  the  windows,  and  triumphantly 
wave  stolen  articles.  On  one  occasion  when  I  had 
"chucked  out"  a  specially  obstreperous  youth,  I  was  met 
with  a  shower  of  mud  and  stones  as  I  passed  through  a 
narrow  alley  on  my  return  home.  The  police  were  always 
at  war  with  the  boys,  who  annoyed  them  in  similar  and 
many  other  ways.  I  remember  two  scholars  whose  eyes 
were  blacked  and  badly  beaten  by  a  "cop"  who  hap- 
pened to  catch  them  in  our  doorway,  as  they  declared, 
"only  waiting  for  Sunday  School  to  open."  Old  scores 
were  paid  off  by  both  parties  whenever  possible.  My 
own  boys  did  not  stay  in  the  old  school  long  after  I  left, 
but  came  and  asked  me  to  keep  a  class  on  Sunday  in  our 
dining-room  —  an  arrangement  in  which  I  gladly  ac- 
quiesced, though  it  involved  my  eventually  abandoning 
the  ragged  school,  which  was  at  least  two  miles  distant. 
With  the  night  work  at  the  lodging-houses,  we  used 
to  combine  a  very  aggressive  total  abstinence  campaign. 
The  saloon-keepers  as  a  rule  looked  upon  us  as  harmless 
cranks,  and  I  have  no  doubt  were  grateful  for  the  leaflets 
we  used  to  distribute  to  their  customers.  These  served 
admirably  for  kindling  purposes.  At  times,  however,  they 
got  ugly,  and  once  my  friend,  who  was  in  a  saloon  talking 
to  a  customer,  was  trapped  and  whiskey  poured  into  his 
mouth.  On  another  occasion  I  noticed  that  the  outer 
doors  were  shut  and  a  couple  of  men  backed  up  against 
them  while  I  was  talking  to  the  bartender  over  the 
counter,  and  that  a  few  other  customers  were  closing  in 
to  repeat  the  same  experiment  on  me.  However,  they 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  53 

greatly  overrated  their  own  stock  of  fitness  and  equally 
underrated  my  good  training,  for  the  scrimmage  went  all 
my  own  way  in  a  very  short  time. 

If  ever  I  told  my  football  chums  (for  in  those  days  I 
was  playing  hard)  of  these  adventures  in  a  nether  world, 
they  always  wanted  to  come  and  cooperate;  but  I  have 
always  felt  that  reliance  on  physical  strength  alone  is 
only  a  menace  when  the  odds  are  so  universally  in  favour 
of  our  friend  the  enemy.  At  this  time  also  at  St.  Andrew's 
Church,  just  across  the  Whitechapel  Road  from  the 
hospital,  the  clergyman  was  a  fine  athlete  and  good 
boxer.  He  was  a  brother  of  Lord  Wenlocks,  and  was  one 
night  returning  from  a  mission  service  in  the  Highway 
when  he  was  set  upon  by  footpads  and  robbed  of  every- 
thing, including  the  boots  off  his  feet.  Meantime  "Jack 
the  Ripper"  was  also  giving  our  residential  section  a 
most  unsavoury  reputation. 

My  long  vacations  at  this  time  were  always  taken  on 
the  sea.  My  brother  and  I  used  to  hire  an  old  fishing 
smack  called  the  "Oyster,"  which  we  rechristened  the 
"Roysterer."  This  we  fitted  out,  provisioned,  and  put 
to  sea  in  with  an  entirely  untrained  crew,  and  without 
even  the  convention  of  caring  where  we  were  found  so 
long  as  the  winds  bore  us  cheerily  along.  My  brother  was 
always  cook  —  and  never  was  there  a  better.  We  believed 
that  he  would  have  made  a  mark  in  the  world  as  a  chef, 
from  his  ability  to  satisfy  our  appetites  and  cater  to  our 
desires  out  of  so  ill-supplied  a  galley.  We  always  took  our 
departure  from  the  north  coast  of  Anglesea  —  a  beauti- 
ful spot,  and  to  us  especially  attractive  as  being  so  entirely 
out  of  the  rim  of  traflfic  that  we  could  do  exactly  as  we 
pleased.  We  invariably  took  our  fishing  gear  with  us, 
and  thus  never  wanted  for  fresh  food.  We  could  replenish 
our  bread,  milk,  butter,  and  egg  supply  at  the  numerous 


54  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

small  ports  at  which  we  called.  The  first  year  the  crew 
consisted  of  my  brother  and  me  —  skipper,  mate,  and 
cook  between  us  —  and  an  Oxford  boating  friend  as 
second  mate.  For  a  deckhand  we  had  a  young  East  Lon- 
don parson,  whom  we  always  knew  as  "the  Puffin,"  be- 
cause he  so  closely  resembled  that  particular  bird  when 
he  had  his  vestments  on.  We  sailed  first  for  Ireland,  but 
the  wind  coming  ahead  we  ran  instead  for  the  Isle  of 
Man.  The  first  night  at  sea  the  very  tall  undergraduate 
as  second  mate  had  the  12  p.m.  to  4  a.m.  night  watch.  The 
tiller  handle  was  very  low,  and  when  I  gave  him  his 
course  at  midnight  before  turning  in  myseK,  he  asked  me 
if  it  would  be  a  breach  of  nautical  etiquette  to  sit  down 
to  steer,  as  that  was  the  only  alternative  to  directing 
the  ship's  course  with  his  ankles.  No  land  was  in  sight, 
and  the  wind  had  died  out  when  I  came  on  deck  for  my 
4  A.M.  to  8  A.M.  watch.  I  found  the  second  mate  sitting 
up  rubbing  his  eyes  as  I  emerged  from  the  companion 
hatch. 

"Well,  where  are  we  now.''  How  is  her  head.'^  What's 
my  course.''" 

"Don't  worry  about  such  commonplace  details,"  he 
replied.  "I  have  made  an  original  discovery  about  these 
parts  that  I  have  never  seen  mentioned  before.'* 

"What's  that.''"  I  asked  innocently. 

"Well,"  he  rephed,  "when  I  sat  down  to  steer  the 
course  you  gave  brought  a  bright  star  right  over  the  top- 
mast head  and  that's  what  I  started  to  steer  by.  It's  a 
perfect  marvel  what  a  game  these  heavenly  bodies  play. 
We  must  be  in  some  place  like  Alice  in  Wonderland.  I 
just  shut  my  eyes  for  a  second  and  when  next  I  opened 
them  the  sun  was  exactly  where  I  had  left  that  star  —  " 
and  he  fled  for  shelter. 

It  is  a  wonder  that  we  ever  got  anywhere,  for  we  had 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  55 

not  so  much  as  a  chronometer  watch,  and  so  in  spite  of 
a  decrepit  sextant  even  our  latitude  was  often  an  uncer- 
tain quantity.  „  However,  we  made  the  port  of  Douglas, 
whence  we  visited  quite  a  part  of  the  historic  island.  As 
our  parson  was  called  home  from  there,  we  wired  for  and 
secured  another  chum  to  share  our  labours.  Our  generally 
unconventional  attire  in  fashionable  summer  resorts  was 
at  times  quite  embarrassing.  Barelegged,  bareheaded, 
and  "tanned  to  a  chip,"  I  was  carrying  my  friend's  bag 
along  the  fashionable  pier  to  see  him  off  on  his  home- 
ward journey,  when  a  lady  stopped  me  and  asked  me  if 
I  were  an  Eskimo,  offering  me  a  job  if  I  needed  one.  I 
have  wondered  sometimes  if  it  were  a  seat  in  a  sideshow 
which  she  had  designed  for  me. 

We  spent  that  holiday  cruising  around  the  island.  It 
included  getting  ashore  off  the  north  point  of  land  and 
nearly  losing  the  craft;  and  also  in  Ryde  Harbour  a 
fracas  with  the  harbour  authorities.  We  had  run  that 
night  on  top  of  the  full  spring  tide.  Not  knowing  the 
harbour,  we  had  tied  up  to  the  first  bollard,  and  gone 
incontinently  to  sleep.  We  were  awakened  by  the  soimd 
of  water  thundering  on  top  of  us,  and  rushing  up  found 
to  our  dismay  that  we  were  lying  in  the  mud,  and  a  large 
sewer  was  discharging  right  on  to  our  decks.  Before  we 
had  time  to  get  away  or  clean  up,  the  harbour  master, 
coming  alongside,  called  on  us  to  pay  harbour  duties.  We 
stoutly  protested  that  as  a  pleasure  yacht  we  were  not 
liable  and  intended  to  resist  to  the  death  any  such  insult 
being  put  upon  us.  He  was  really  able  to  see  at  once  that 
we  were  just  young  fellows  out  for  a  holiday,  but  he  had 
the  last  word  before  a  crowd  of  sight-seers  who  had 
gathered  on  the  quay  above  us.  ■ 

"Pleasure  yacht,  pleasure  yacht,  indeed ! "  he  shouted 
as  he  rode  away.  "I  can  prove  to  any  man  with  half  an 


56  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

eye  that  you  are  nothing  but  one  of  them  old  coal  or  mud 
barges." 

The  following  year  the  wind  suited  better  the  other 
way.  We  were  practically  all  young  doctors  this  time,  the 
cook  being  a  very  athletic  chum  in  whose  rooms  were 
collected  as  trophies,  in  almost  every  branch  of  athletics, 
over  seventy  of  what  we  called  silver  "pots."  As  a  cook 
he  proved  a  failure  except  in  zeal.  It  did  n't  really  interest 
him,  especially  when  the  weather  was  lively.  On  one 
occasion  I  reported  to  the  galley,  though  I  was  the  skip- 
per that  year,  in  search  of  the  rice-pudding  for  dinner  — 
Dennis,  our  cook,  being  temporarily  indisposed.  Such  a 
sight  as  met  my  view!  Had  I  been  superstitious  I  should 
have  fled.  A  great  black  column  the  circumference  of  the 
boiler  had  risen  not  less  than  a  foot  above  the  top  rim, 
and  was  wearing  the  iron  cover  jaimtily  on  one  side  as  a 
helmet.  It  proved  to  be  rice.  He  had  filled  the  saucepan 
with  dry  rice,  crowded  in  a  little  water,  forced  the  lid  on 
very  tight  and  left  it  to  its  own  devices ! 

Nor,  in  his  subsequent  capacity  as  deckhand,  did  he 
redeem  in  our  eyes  the  high  qualities  of  seamanship 
which  we  had  anticipated  from  him. 

Our  tour  took  us  this  time  through  the  Menai  Straits, 
via  Carnarvon  and  the  Welsh  coast,  down  the  Irish 
Channel  to  Milford  Haven.  In  the  region  of  very  heavy 
tides  and  dangerous  rocks  near  the  south  Welsh  coast, 
we  doubled  our  watch  at  night.  One  night  the  wind  fell 
very  light,  and  we  had  stood  close  inshore  in  order  to 
pass  inside  the  Bishop  Rocks.  The  wind  died  out  at  that 
very  moment,  and  the  heavy  current  driving  us  down 
on  the  rocky  islands  threatened  prematurely  to  termi- 
nate our  cruise.  The  cook  was  asleep,  as  usual  when 
called,  and  at  last  aroused  to  the  nature  of  the  alarm, 
was  found  leaning  forward  over  the  ship's  bows  with  a 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  57 

lighted  candle.  When  asked  what  he  was  doing,  he  ex- 
plained, "Why,  looking  for  those  bishops,  of  course." 

No  holiday  anywhere  could  be  better  sport  than  those 
cruises.  There  was  responsibility,  yet  rest,  mutual  de- 
pendence, and  a  charming,  unconventional  way  of  getting 
acquainted  with  one's  own  country.  We  visited  Car- 
narvon, Harlech,  and  other  castles,  lost  our  boat  in  a 
breeze  of  wind  off  Dynllyn,  climbed  Snowden  from 
Pwllheli  Harbour,  and  visited  a  dozen  little  out-of-the- 
world  harbours  that  one  would  otherwise  never  see. 
Fishing  and  shooting  for  the  pot,  bathing  and  rowing, 
and  every  kind  of  healthy  out-of-doors  pleasure  was 
indulged  in  along  the  road  of  travel.  Moreover,  it  was  all 
made  to  cost  just  as  much  or  as  little  as  you  liked. 

Another  amusing  memory  which  still  remains  with  me 
was  at  one  httle  seaport  where  a  very  small  man  not 
over  five  feet  high  had  married  a  woman  considerably 
over  six.  He  was  an  idle,  drunken  little  rascal,  and  I  met 
her  one  day  striding  down  the  street  with  her  intoxicated 
little  spouse  wrapped  up  in  her  apron  and  feebly  pro- 
testing. 

One  result  of  these  holidays  was  that  I  told  my 
London  boys  about  them,  using  one's  experiences  as 
illustrations;  till  suddenly  it  struck  me  that  this  was 
shabby  Christianity.  Why  should  n't  these  town  cage- 
lings  share  our  holidays  .f^  Thirteen  accompanied  me  the 
following  summer.  We  had  three  tents,  an  old  deserted 
factory,  and  an  uninhabited  gorge  by  the  sea,  all  to  our- 
selves on  the  Anglesea  coast,  among  people  who  spoke 
only  Welsh.  Thus  we  had  all  the  joys  of  foreign  travel  at 
very  little  cost. 

Among  the  many  tricks  the  boys  "got  away  with" 
was  one  at  the  big  railway  junction  at  Bangor,  where 
we  had  an  hour  to  wait.  They  apparently  got  into  the 


58  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

baggage-room  and  stole  a  varied  assortment  of  labels, 
which,  they  industriously  pasted  over  those  on  a  large 
pile  of  luggage  stacked  on  the  platform.  The  subsequent 
tangle  of  destinations  can  better  be  imagined  than  de- 
scribed. 

Camp  rules  were  simple  —  no  clothing  allowed  except 
short  blue  knickers  and  gray  flannel  shirts,  no  shoes, 
stockings,  or  caps  except  on  Sundays.  The  uniform  was 
provided  and  was  as  a  rule  the  amateur  production  of 
numerous  friends,  for  our  finances  were  strictly  hmited. 
The  knickers  were  not  particularly  successful,  the  legs 
frequently  being  carried  so  high  up  that  there  was  no 
space  into  which  the  body  could  be  inserted.  Every  one 
had  to  bathe  in  the  sea  before  he  got  any  breakfast.  I 
can  still  see  ravenous  boys  staving  ofiF  the  evil  hour  till 
as  near  midday  as  possible.  No  one  was  allowed  in  the 
boats  who  could  n't  swim,  an  art  which  they  all  quickly 
acquired.  There  was,  of  course,  a  regular  fatigue  party 
each  day  for  the  household  duties.  We  had  no  beds  — 
sleeping  on  long,  burlap  bags  stuffed  with  hay.  A  very 
favourite  pastime  was  afforded  by  our  big  lifeboat,  an 
old  one  hired  from  the  National  Lifeboat  Society.  The 
tides  flowed  very  strongly  alongshore,  east  on  the  flood 
tide  and  west  on  the  ebb.  Food,  fishing  lines,  and  a 
skipper  for  the  day  being  provided,  the  old  boat  would 
go  off  with  the  tide  in  the  morning,  the  boys  had  a  picnic 
somewhere  during  the  slack-water  interim,  and  came 
back  with  the  return  tide. 

When  our  numbers  grew,  as  they  did  to  thirty  the 
second  year,  and  nearly  a  hundred  in  subsequent  sea- 
sons, thirty  or  more  boys  would  be  packed  off  daily  in 
that  way  —  and  yet  we  never  lost  one  of  them.  If  they 
had  not  had  as  many  lives  as  cats  it  would  have  been 
quite  another  story.  The  boat  had  sufficient  sails  to  give 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  59 

the  appearance  to  their  unfamiliar  eyes  of  being  a  sailing 
vessel,  but  the  real  work  was  done  with  twelve  huge  oars, 
two  boys  to  an  oar  being  the  rule.  At  nights  they  used  to 
come  drifting  homeward  on  the  returning  tides  singing 
their  dirges,  like  some  historic  barge  of  old.  There  was 
one  familiar  hymn  called  "Bringing  in  the  Sheaves," 
which  like  everything  else  these  rascals  adapted  for  the 
use  of  the  moment;  and  many  a  time  the  returning  barge 
would  be  announced  to  us  cooking  supper  in  the  old 
factory  or  in  the  silent  gorge,  by  the  ringing  echoes  of 
many  voices  beating  with  their  oars  as  they  came  on  to 
the  words: 

"Pulling  at  the  sweeps. 
Pulling  at  the  sweeps; 
Here  we  come  rejoicing, 
PuUing  at  the  sweeps." 

As  soon  as  the  old  boat's  keel  slid  up  upon  the  beach, 
there  would  be  a  rush  of  as  appreciative  a  supper  party 
as  ever  a  cook  had  the  pleasure  of  catering  for. 

An  annual  expedition  was  to  the  top  of  Mount  Snow- 
don,  the  highest  in  England  or  Wales.  It  was  attempted 
by  land  and  water.  Half  of  us  tramped  overland  in 
forced  marches  to  the  beautiful  Menai  Straits,  crossed 
the  suspension  bridge,  and  were  given  splendid  hospital- 
ity and  good  beds  on  the  straw  of  the  large  stables  at  the 
beautiful  country  seat  of  a  friend  at  Treborth.  Here  the 
boat  section  who  came  around  the  island  were  to  meet 
us,  anchoring  their  craft  on  the  south  side  of  the  Straits. 
Our  second  year  the  naval  division  did  not  turn  up,  and 
some  had  qualms  of  conscience  that  evil  might  have 
overtaken  them.  Nor  did  they  arrive  until  we  by  land 
had  conquered  the  summit,  travelling  by  Bethesda  and 
the  famous  slate  quarries,  and  returning  for  the  second 
evening  at  Treborth.  We  then  found  that  they  had  been 


60  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

stranded  on  the  sands  in  Red  Wharf  Bay,  so  far  from 
shore  that  they  could  neither  go  forward  nor  back;  had 
thus  spent  their  first  night  in  a  somewhat  chilly  manner 
in  old  bathing  machines  by  the  land  wash,  and  supped 
off  the  superfluous  hard  biscuit  which  they  had  been  re- 
serving for  the  return  voyage.  They  were  none  the  worse, 
however,  our  genial  host  making  it  up  to  them  in  an 
extra  generous  provision  and  a  special  evening  entertain- 
ment. One  of  my  smartest  boys  (a  Jew  by  nationality, 
for  we  made  no  distinctions  in  election  to  our  class),  in 
recounting  his  adventures  to  me  next  day,  said:  "My! 
Doctor,  I  did  have  some  fun  kidding  that  waiter  in  the 
white  choker.  He  took  a  liking  to  me  so  I  let  him  pal  up. 
I  told  him  my  name  was  Lord  Shaftesbury  when  I  was 
home,  but  I  asked  him  not  to  let  it  out,  and  the  old  bloke 
promised  he  wouldn't."  The  "old  bloke"  happened  to 
be  our  host,  who  was  always  in  dress-clothes  in  the 
evening,  the  only  time  we  were  at  his  house. 

These  holidays  were  the  best  lessons  of  love  I  could 
show  my  boys.  It  drew  us  very  closely  together;  and  to 
make  the  boys  feel  it  less  a  charitable  affair,  every  one 
was  encouraged  to  save  up  his  railway  fare  and  as  much 
more  as  possible.  By  special  arrangement  with  the  rail- 
way and  other  friends,  and  by  very  simple  living,  the 
per  caput  charges  were  so  much  reduced  that  many  of 
the  boys  not  only  paid  their  own  expenses,  but  even 
helped  their  friends.  The  start  was  always  attended  by 
a  crowd  of  relatives,  all  helping  with  the  baggage.  The 
father  of  one  of  my  boys  was  a  costermonger,  and  had  a 
horse  that  he  had  obtained  very  cheap  because  it  had  a 
disease  of  the  legs.  He  always  kept  it  in  the  downstairs 
portion  of  his  house,  which  it  entered  by  the  front  door. 
It  was  a  great  pleasure  to  him  to  come  and  cart  our 
things  free  to  the  station.  The  boys  used  to  load  his  cart 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  61 

at  our  house,  and  I  remember  one  time  that  they  made 
him  haul  unconsciously  all  the  way  to  the  big  London 
terminal  at  Euston  half  our  furniture,  including  our  coal 
boxes.  His  son,  a  most  charming  boy,  made  good  in  life 
in  Australia  and  bought  a  nice  house  in  one  of  the  sub- 
urbs for  his  father  and  mother.  I  had  the  pleasure  one 
night  of  meeting  them  all  there.  The  father  was  terribly 
uneasy,  for  he  said  he  just  could  not  get  accustomed  to 
it.  All  his  old  "pals"  were  gone,  and  his  neighbours' 
tastes  and  interests  were  a  great  gulf  between  them.  I 
heard  later  that  as  soon  as  his  son  left  England  again  the 
old  man  sold  the  house,  and  returned  to  the  more  con- 
genial associations  of  a  costermonger's  life,  where  I  be- 
lieve he  died  in  harness. 

The  last  two  years  of  my  stay  in  London  being  occu- 
pied with  resident  work  at  hospital,  I  could  not  find 
time  for  such  far-off  holidays,  and  at  the  suggestion  of 
my  chief.  Sir  Frederick  Treves,  himself  a  Dorsetshire 
man,  we  camped  by  permission  of  our  friends,  the 
owners,  in  the  grounds  of  Lul worth  Castle,  close  by  the 
sea.  The  class  had  now  developed  into  a  semi-military 
organization.  We  had  acquired  real  rifles  —  old-timers 
from  the  Tower  of  London  —  and  our  athletic  clubs 
were  portions  of  the  Anglesey  Boys'  Brigade,  which 
antedated  the  Boys'  Brigade  of  Glasgow,  forerunner  of 
the  Church  Lads'  Brigade,  and  the  Boy  Scouts. 

One  of  the  great  attractions  of  the  new  camping- 
ground  was  the  exquisite  country  and  the  splendid  coast, 
with  chalk  cliffs  over  which  almost  any  one  could  fall 
with  impunity.  Lulworth  Cove,  one  of  the  most  pic- 
turesque in  England,  was  the  summer  resort  of  my  chief, 
and  he  being  an  expert  mariner  and  swimmer  used  not 
only  very  often  to  join  us  at  camp,  but  always  gave  the 
boys  a  fine  regatta  and  picnic  at  his  cottage.  Our  water 


62  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

polo  games  were  also  a  great  feature  here,  the  water 
being  warm  and  enabling  us  easily  to  play  out  the  games. 
There  are  also  numerous  beautiful  castles  and  country 
houses  all  the  way  between  Swanage  and  Weymouth, 
and  we  had  such  kindness  extended  to  us  wherever  we 
went  that  every  day  was  a  dream  of  joy  to  the  lads. 
Without  any  question  they  acquired  new  visions  and 
ideals  through  these  experiences. 

We  always  struck  camp  at  the  end  of  a  fortnight,  hav- 
ing sometimes  arranged  with  other  friends  with  classes 
of  their  own  to  step  into  our  shoes.  The  present  head 
master  of  Shrewsbury  and  many  other  distinguished 
persons  shared  with  us  some  of  the  educative  joys  of 
those  days.  Among  the  many  other  more  selfish  portions 
of  the  holidays  none  stand  out  more  clearly  in  my  mem- 
ory than  the  August  days  when  partridge  and  grouse 
shooting  used  to  open.  Most  of  my  shooting  was  done 
over  the  delightful  highlands  around  Bishop's  Castle  in 
Shropshire,  on  the  outskirts  of  the  Welsh  hills,  in  Clun 
Forest,  and  on  the  heather-covered  Longmynds.  How  I 
loved  those  days,  and  the  friends  who  made  them  pos- 
sible—  the  sound  of  the  beaters,  the  intelligent  setters 
and  retrievers,  the  keepers  in  velveteens,  the  lunches 
under  the  shade  of  the  great  hedges  or  in  lovely  cottages, 
where  the  ladies  used  to  meet  us  at  midday,  and  every 
one  used  to  jolly  you  about  not  shooting  straight,  and 
you  had  to  take  refuge  in  a  thousand  "ifs." 

As  one  looks  back  on  it  all  from  Labrador,  it  breathes 
the  aroma  of  an  old  civilization  and  ancient  customs. 
Much  of  the  shooting  was  over  the  old  lands  of  the 
Walcotts  of  Walcott  Hall,  a  family  estate  that  had  been 
bought  up  by  Earl  Clive  on  his  return  from  India,  and 
was  now  in  the  hands  of  his  descendant,  an  old  bache- 
lor who  shot  very  little,  riding  from  one  good  stand 


EARLY  WORK  IN  LONDON  63 

to  another  on  a  steady  old  pony.  There  were  many  such 
estates,  another  close  by  being  that  of  the  Oakovers  of 
Oakover,  a  family  that  has  since  sold  their  heritage. 

A  thousand  time-honoured  old  customs,  only  made 
acceptable  by  their  hoary  age,  added,  and  still  continue 
to  add  in  the  pleasures  of  memory,  to  the  joys  of  those 
days,  with  which  golf  and  tennis  and  all  the  wonderful 
luxury  of  the  modern  summer  hotel  seem  never  able  to 
compete.  It  is  right,  however,  that  such  eras  should  pass. 

The  beautiful  forest  of  Savernake,  that  in  my  school 
days  I  had  loved  so  well,  and  which  meant  so  much  to 
us  boys,  spoke  only  too  loudly  of  the  evil  heirloom  of  the 
laws  of  entail.  Spendthrift  and  dissolute  heirs  had  made 
it  impossible  for  the  land  to  be  utilized  for  the  benefit  of 
the  people,  and  yet  kept  it  in  the  hands  of  utterly  un- 
deserving persons.  Being  of  royal  descent  they  still  bore 
a  royal  name  even  in  my  day;  but  it  was  told  of  them 
that  the  last,  who  had  been  asked  to  withdraw  from  the 
school,  on  one  occasion  when,  half  drunk,  he  was  de- 
fending himself  from  the  gibes  and  jeers  of  grooms  and 
'ostlers  whom  he  had  made  his  companions,  rose  with  ill- 
assumed  dignity  and  with  an  oath  declared  that  he  was 
their  king  by  divine  right  if  only  he  had  his  dues.  Look- 
ing back  it  seems  to  me  that  the  germs  of  democratic 
tendencies  were  sown  in  me  by  just  those  very  incidents. 


CHAPTER  IV 

AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL 

I  HAVE  never  ceased  to  regret  that  there  was  not  more 
corporate  Kfe  in  our  medical  school,  but  I  believe  that 
conditions  have  been  greatly  improved  since  my  day. 
Here  and  there  two  or  three  classmates  would  "dig"  to- 
gether, but  otherwise,  except  at  lectures  or  in  hospitals, 
we  seldom  met  unless  it  was  on  the  athletic  teams.  We 
had  no  playground  of  our  own,  and  so,  unable  to  get 
other  hospitals  to  combine,  when  a  now  famous  St. 
Thomas  man  and  myself  hired  part  of  the  justly  cele- 
brated London  Rowing  Club  Headquarters  at  Putney 
for  a  united  hospitals'  headquarters,  we  used  to  take  our 
blazers  and  more  cherished  possessions  home  with  us  at 
night  for  fear  of  distraint  of  rent. 

They  were  great  days.  Rowing  on  the  Thames  about 
Putney  is  not  like  that  at  Oxford  on  a  mill-pond,  or  as  at 
Cambridge  on  what  we  nicknamed  a  drain  that  should 
be  roofed  over.  Its  turgid  waters  were  often  rough  enough 
to  sink  a  rowing  shell,  and  its  busy  traffic  was  a  thing 
with  which  to  reckon.  But  it  offered  associations  with  all 
kinds  of  interesting  places,  historical  and  otherwise,  from 
the  Star  and  Garter  at  Richmond  and  the  famous  Park 
away  to  Boulter's  Lock  and  Cleveden  Woods,  to  the 
bathing  pools  about  Taplow  Court,  the  seat  of  the  senior 
branch  of  our  family,  and  to  Marlow  and  Goring  where 
our  annual  club  outings  were  held.  Twice  I  rowed  in  the 
inter-hospital  race  from  Putney  to  Mortlake,  once  as 
bow  and  again  as  stroke.  During  those  early  days  the 
"London"  frequently  had  the  best  boat  on  the  river. 

Having  now  finished  my  second  year  at  hospital  and 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  65 

taken  my  preliminary  examinations,  including  the  sci- 
entific preliminary,  and  my  first  bachelor  of  medicine 
for  the  University  of  London  degree,  I  had  advanced  to 
the  dignity  of  "walking  the  hospitals,"  carried  a  large 
shining  stethoscope,  and  spent  much  time  following  the 
famous  physicians  and  surgeons  around  the  wards. 

Our  first  appointment  was  clerking  in  the  medical 
wards.  We  had  each  so  many  beds  allotted  to  us,  and  it 
was  our  business  to  know  everything  about  the  patients 
who  occupied  them,  to  keep  accurate  "histories"  of  all 
developments,  and  to  be  ready  to  be  quizzed  and  queried 
by  our  resident  house  physician,  or  our  visiting  con- 
sultant on  the  afternoon  when  he  made  his  rounds,  fol- 
lowed by  larger  or  smaller  crowds  of  students  according 
to  the  value  which  was  placed  upon  his  teaching.  I  was 
lucky  enough  to  work  under  the  famous  Sir  Andrew 
Clark,  Mr.  Gladstone's  great  physician.  He  was  a 
Scotchman  greatly  beloved,  and  always  with  a  huge 
following  to  whom  he  imparted  far  more  valuable  truths 
than  even  the  medical  science  of  thirty  years  ago  afforded. 
His  constant  message,  repeated  and  repeated  at  the  risk 
of  wearying,  was:  "Gentlemen,  you  must  observe  for 
yourselves.  It  is  your  observation  and  not  your  memory 
which  counts.  It  is  the  patient  and  not  the  disease  whom 
you  are  treating." 

Compared  with  the  methods  of  diagnosis  to-day  those 
then  were  very  limited,  but  Sir  Andrew's  message  was 
the  more  important,  showing  the  greatness  of  the  man, 
who,  though  at  the  very  top  of  the  tree,  never  for  a  mo- 
ment tried  to  convey  to  his  followers  that  his  knowledge 
was  final,  but  that  any  moment  he  stood  ready  to  aban- 
don his  position  for  a  better  one.  On  one  occasion,  to  illus- 
trate this  point,  while  he  was  in  one  of  the  largest  of  our 
wards  (one  with  four  divisions  and  twenty  beds  each)  he 


66  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

was  examining  a  lung  case,  while  a  huge  class  of  fifty 
young  doctors  stood  around.  ;, 

"What  about  the  sputum,  Mr.  Jones?"  he  asked. 
"What  have  you  observed  coming  from  these  lungs.''  " 

"There  is  not  much  quantity,  sir.  It  is  greenish  in 
colour." 

"But  what  about  the  microscope,  Mr.  Jones?  What 
does  that  show?" 

"No  examination  has  been  made,  sir." 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "I  will  now  go  to  the  other 
ward,  and  you  shall  choose  a  specimen  of  the  sputum  of 
some  of  these  cases.  When  I  return  we  will  examine  it 
and  see  what  we  can  learn."  h 

When  he  returned,  four  specimens  awaited  him,  the 
history  and  diagnoses  of  the  cases  being  known  only  to 
the  class.  The  class  never  forgot  how  by  dissolving  and 
boiling,  and  with  the  microscope,  he  told  us  almost  more 
from  his  examination  of  each  case  than  we  knew  from 
all  our  other  information.  His  was  real  teaching,  and  re- 
minds one  of  the  Glasgow  professor  who,  in  order  to 
emphasize  the  same  point  of  the  value  of  observation, 
prepared  a  little  cupful  of  kerosene,  mustard,  and  castor 
oil,  and  calling  the  attention  of  his  class  to  it,  dipped  a 
finger  into  the  atrocious  compound  and  then  sucked  his 
finger.  He  then  passed  the  mixture  around  to  the  stu- 
dents who  all  did  the  same  with  most  dire  results.  When 
the  cup  returned  and  he  observed  the  faces  of  his  students, 
he  remarked:  "Gentlemen,  I  am  afraid  you  did  not  use 
your  powers  of  obsairvation.  The  finger  that  I  put  into 
the  cup  was  no  the  same  one  that  I  stuck  in  my  mouth 
afterwards."  „. 

Sir  Stephen  Mackenzie,  who  operated  on  the  Emperor 
Frederick,  was  another  excellent  teacher  under  whom  we 
had  the  good  fortune  to  study.  Indeed,  whatever  could 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  67 

be  said  against  the  teaching  of  our  college,  in  this  much 
more  important  field  of  learning,  the  London  Hospital 
was  most  signally  fortunate,  and,  moreover,  was  famed 
not  only  in  London,  but  all  the  world  over.  Our  "  walking 
class"  used  to  number  men  from  the  United  States  to 
Australia,  insomuch  that  the  crowds  became  so  large 
that  the  teachers  could  not  get  room  to  pass  along.  It 
was  this  fact  which  led  to  the  practice,  now  almost  uni- 
versal, of  carrying  the  patient  in  his  bed  with  a  nurse 
in  attendance  into  the  theatre  for  observation  as  more 
comfortable  and  profitable  for  all  concerned. 

On  changing  over  to  the  surgical  side  in  the  hospital, 
we  were  employed  in  a  very  similar  manner,  only  we 
were  called  "dressers,"  and  under  the  house  surgeon  had 
all  the  care  of  a  number  of  surgical  patients.  My  good 
fortune  now  brought  me  under  the  chieftaincy  of  Sir 
Frederick  Treves,  the  doyen  of  teachers.  His  great  mes- 
sage was  self-reliance.  He  taught  dogmatically  as  one 
having  authority,  and  always  insisted  that  we  should 
make  up  our  minds,  have  a  clear  idea  of  what  we  were 
doing,  and  then  do  it.  His  ritual  was  always  thought  out, 
no  detail  being  omitted,  and  each  person  had  exactly  his 
share  of  work  and  his  share  of  responsibility.  It  used 
greatly  to  impress  patients,  and  he  never  underestimated 
the  psychical  value  of  having  their  complete  confidence. 
Thus,  on  one  occasion  asking  a  dresser  for  his  diagnosis, 
the  student  replied: 

"It  might  be  a  fracture,  sir,  or  it  might  be  only 
sprained." 

"The  patient  is  not  interested  to  know  that  it  might 
be  measles,  or  it  might  be  toothache.  The  patient  wants 
to  know  what  is  the  matter,  and  it  is  your  business  to 
tell  it  to  him  or  he  will  go  to  a  quack  who  will  inform 
him  at  once." 


68  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

All  his  teachings  were,  like  Mark  Twain's,  enhanced 
by  such  over-emphasis  or  exaggeration.  He  could  make 
an  article  in  the  "British  Medical  Journal"  on  Cholecys- 
tenterostomy  amusing  to  a  general  reader,  and  make  an 
ordinary  remark  as  cutting  as  an  amputation  knife.  He 
never  permitted  laxity  of  any  kind  in  personal  appear- 
ance or  dress,  or  any  imposing  on  the  patients.  His  habit 
of  saying  openly  exactly  what  he  meant  made  many 
people  fear,  as  much  as  they  respected,  him.  However, 
he  was  always,  in  spite  of  it,  the  most  popular  of  all  the 
chiefs  because  he  was  so  worth  while. 

One  incident  recurs  to  my  mind  which  I  must  recount 
as  an  example  when  psychology  failed.  A  Whitechapel 
*'lady,"  suffering  with  a  very  violent  form  of  delirium 
tremens,  was  lying  screeching  in  a  strait-jacket  on  the 
cushioned  floor  of  the  padded  room.  With  the  usual  huge 
queue  of  students  following,  he  had  gone  in  to  see  her, 
as  I  had  been  unable  to  get  the  results  desired  with  a 
reasonable  quantity  of  sedatives  and  soporifics.  It  was  a 
very  rare  occasion,  for  cases  which  did  not  involve  active 
surgery  he  left  strictly  alone.  After  giving  a  talk  on  psy- 
chical influence  he  had  the  jacket  removed  as  "a  relic 
of  barbarism,"  and  in  a  very  impressive  way  looking  into 
her  glaring  eyes  and  shaking  his  forefinger  at  her,  he 
said:  "Now,  you  are  comfortable,  my  good  woman,  and 
will  sleep.  You  will  make  no  more  disturbance  whatever." 
There  was  an  unusual  silence.  The  woman  remained 
absolutely  passive,  and  we  all  turned  to  follow  the  chief 
out.  Suddenly  the  "lady"  called  out,  "Hi,  hi,"  —  and 
some  perverse  spirit  induced  Sir  Frederick  to  return. 
Looking  back  with  defiant  eyes  she  screamed  out,  "You! 

You  with  a  f aice !  You  do  think  yerself clever, 

don't  yer.^*"  The  strange  situation  was  only  relieved  by 
his  bursting  into  a  genuine  fit  of  laughter. 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  69 

Among  other  celebrated  men  who  were  admired  and 
revered  was  Mr.  Harry  Fen  wick  on  the  surgical  side,  for 
whom  I  had  the  honour  of  illustrating  in  colours  his  prize 
Jacksonian  essay.  Any  talent  for  sketching,  especially  in 
colours,  is  of  great  value  to  the  student  of  medicine.  Once 
you  have  sketched  a  case  from  nature,  with  the  object 
of  showing  the  peculiarity  of  the  abnormality,  it  remains 
permanently  in  your  mind.  Besides  this,  it  forces  you  to 
note  small  differences;  in  other  words,  it  teaches  you  to 
"obsairve."  Thus,  in  the  skin  department  I  was  sent 
to  reproduce  a  case  of  anthrax  of  the  neck,  a  rare  disease 
in  England,  though  all  men  handling  raw  hides  are  liable 
to  contract  it.  The  area  had  to  be  immediately  excised; 
yet  one  never  could  forget  the  picture  on  one's  mind.  On 
another  occasion  a  case  of  genuine  leprosy  was  brought 
in,  with  all  the  dreadful  signs  of  the  disease.  The  macula 
rash  was  entirely  unique  so  far  as  I  knew,  but  a  sketch 
greatly  helped  to  fix  it  on  one's  memory.  The  poor  pa- 
tient proved  to  be  one  of  the  men  who  was  handling  the 
meat  in  London's  greatest  market  at  Smithfield.  A  tre- 
mendous hue  and  cry  spread  over  London  when  some- 
how the  news  got  into  the  paper,  and  vegetarianism 
received  a  temporary  boost  which  in  my  opinion  it  still 
badly  needs  for  the  benefit  of  the  popular  welfare. 

Among  the  prophets  of  that  day  certainly  should  be 
numbered  another  of  our  teachers,  Dr.  Sutton,  an  author, 
and  very  much  of  a  personality.  For  while  being  one  of 
the  consulting  physicians  of  the  largest  of  London  hos- 
pitals, he  was  naturally  scientific  and  strictly  profes- 
sional. He  was  very  far,  however,  from  being  the  con- 
ventionalist of  those  days,  and  the  younger  students 
used  to  look  greatly  askance  at  him.  His  message  always 
was:  "Drugs  are  very  little  use  whatever.  Nature  is  the 
source  of  healing.  Give  her  a  chance."  Thus,  a  careful 


70  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

history  would  be  read  over  to  him;  all  the  certain  signs 
of  typhoid  would  be  noted  —  and  his  comment  almost 
always  was:  "This  case  won't  benefit  by  drugs.  We  will 
have  the  bed  wheeled  out  into  the  sunshine.'*  The  next 
case  would  be  acute  lobar  pneumonia  and  the  same 
treatment  would  be  adopted.  "This  patient  needs  air, 
gentlemen.  We  must  wheel  him  out  into  the  sunshine"  — 
and  so  on.  How  near  we  are  coming  to  his  teaching  in 
these  days  is  already  impressing  itself  upon  our  minds. 
Unfortunately  the  fact  that  the  doctors  realize  that 
medicines  are  not  so  potent  as  our  forbears  thought  has 
not  left  the  public  with  the  increased  confidence  in  the 
profession  which  the  infinitely  more  rational  treatment 
of  to-day  justifies,  and  valuable  time  is  wasted  and  fatal 
delays  incurred,  by  a  return  of  the  more  impressionable 
public  to  quacks  with  high-sounding  titles,  or  to  cults 
where  faith  is  almost  credulity. 

Truly  one  has  lived  through  wonderful  days  in  the 
history  of  the  healing  art.  The  first  operations  which  I 
saw  performed  at  our  hospitals  were  before  Lord  Lister's 
teaching  was  practised;  though  even  in  my  boyhood  I 
remember  getting  leave  to  run  up  from  Marlborough  to 
London  to  see  my  brother,  on  whom  Sir  Joseph  Lister 
had  operated  for  osteomyelitis  of  the  leg.  Our  most 
famous  surgeon  in  1880  was  Sir  Walter  Rivington;  and 
to-day  there  rises  in  memory  the  picture  of  him  removing 
a  leg  at  the  thigh,  clad  in  a  blood-stained,  black  velvet 
coat,  and  without  any  attempt  at  or  idea  of  asepsis.  The 
main  thing  was  speed,  although  the  patient  was  under 
ether,  and  in  quickly  turning  round  the  tip  of  the  sword- 
like amputation  knife,  he  made  a  gash  in  the  patient's 
other  leg.  The  whole  thing  seemed  horrible  enough  to  us 
students,  but  the  surgeon  smiled,  saying,  "Fortunately 
it  is  of  no  importance,  gentlemen.  The  man  will  not  live." 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  71 

The  day  came  when  every  one  worked  under  clouds  of 
carbolic  steam  which  fizzed  and  spouted  from  large  brass 
boilers  over  everything;  and  then  the  time  when  every 
one  was  criticizing  the  new,  young  surgeon,  Treves,  who 
was  daring  to  discard  it,  and  getting  as  good  results  by 
scrupulous  cleanliness.  His  aphorism  was,  "Gentlemen, 
the  secret  of  surgery  is  the  nailbrush."  Now  with  blood 
examinations,  germ  cultures,  sera  tests.  X-rays,  and  a 
hundred  added  improvements,  one  can  say  to  a  fisher- 
man in  far-off  Labrador  arriving  on  a  mail  steamer,  and 
to  whom  every  hour  lost  in  the  fishing  season  spells 
calamity,  "Yes,  brother,  you  can  be  operated  on  and  the 
wound  will  be  healed  and  you  will  be  ready  to  go  back 
by  the  next  steamer,  unless  some  utterly  unforeseen  cir- 
cumstance arises." 

The  fallibility  of  diagnosis  was  at  this  very  impres- 
sionable time  fixed  upon  my  mind  —  a  fact  that  has 
since  served  me  in  good  stead.  For  what  can  be  more 
reactionary  in  human  life  than  the  man  who  thinks  he 
knows  it  all,  whether  it  be  in  science,  philosophy,  or 
religion.'' 

During  my  Christmas  vacation  I  was  asked  to  go 
north  and  visit  my  father's  brother,  a  well-known  cap- 
tain in  Her  Majesty's  Navy,  who  was  also  an  inventor 
in  gim  machinery  and  sighting  apparatus,  and  who  had 
been  appointed  the  naval  head  of  Lord  Armstrong's 
great  works  at  Yarrow-on-the-Tyne.  All  that  I  was  told 
was  that  he  had  been  taken  with  such  severe  pains  in 
the  back  that  he  needed  some  one  with  him,  and  my 
new-fledged  dignity  of  "walking  the  hospitals"  was  sup- 
posed to  qualify  me  especially  for  the  post.  Already  my 
uncle  had  seen  many  doctors  in  London  and  had  been 
ordered  to  the  Continent  for  rest.  After  some  months, 
not  a  bit  improved,  he  had  again  returned  to  London. 


72  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

This  time  the  doctor  told  his  wife  that  it  was  a  mental 
trouble,  and  that  he  should  be  sent  to  an  asylum.  This 
she  most  indignantly  denied,  and  yet  desired  my  com- 
pany as  the  only  medical  Grenfell,  who  at  such  a  crisis 
could  stay  in  the  house  without  being  looked  upon  as  a 
warder  or  keeper.  Meantime  they  had  consulted  Sir 
C.  P.,  who  had  told  my  imcle  that  he  had  an  aneurism 
of  his  aorta,  and  that  he  must  be  prepared  to  have  it 
break  and  kill  him  any  minute.  His  preparations  were 
accordingly  all  made,  and  personally  I  fully  anticipated 
that  he  would  fall  dead  before  I  left.  He  put  up  a  won- 
derful fight  against  excruciating  pain,  of  which  I  was 
frequently  a  witness.  But  the  days  went  by  and  nothing 
happened,  so  I  returned  to  town  and  another  young 
doctor  took  my  place.  He  also  got  tired  of  waiting  and 
suggested  it  might  be  some  spinal  trouble.  He  induced 
them  once  more  to  visit  London  and  see  Sir  Victor 
Horsley,  whose  work  on  the  brains  of  animals  and  men 
had  marked  an  epoch  in  our  knowledge  of  the  central 
nervous  system.  Some  new  symptoms  had  now  super- 
vened, and  the  famous  neurologist  at  once  diagnosed  a 
tumour  in  the  spinal  canal.  Such  a  case  had  never  pre- 
viously been  operated  on  successfully,  but  there  was  no 
alternative.  The  operation  was  brilliantly  performed 
and  a  wonderful  success  obtained.  The  case  was  quoted 
in  the  next  edition  of  our  surgical  textbooks. 

A  little  later  my  father's  health  began  to  fail  in 
London,  the  worries  and  troubles  of  a  clergyman's  work 
among  the  poor  creatures  who  were  constantly  passing 
under  his  care  utterly  overwhelming  him.  We  had  agreed 
that  a  long  change  of  thought  was  necessary  and  he  and 
I  started  for  a  fishing  and  sight-seeing  tour  in  Norway. 
Our  steamer  was  to  sail  from  the  Tyne,  and  we  went  up 
to  Newcastle  to  catch  it.  There  some  evil  fiend  persuaded 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  73 

my  father  to  go  and  consult  a  doctor  about  his  illness, 
for  Newcastle  has  produced  some  well-known  names  in 
medicine.  Thus,  while  I  waited  at  the  hotel  to  start,  my 
father  became  persuaded  that  he  had  some  occult  dis- 
ease of  the  liver,  and  must  remain  in  Newcastle  for 
treatment.  I,  however,  happened  to  be  treasurer  of  the 
voyage,  and  for  the  first  time  asserting  my  professional 
powers,  insisted  that  I  was  family  physician  for  the  time, 
and  turned  up  in  the  evening  with  all  our  round-trip 
tickets  and  reservations  taken  and  paid  for.  In  the  morn- 
ing I  had  the  trunks  packed  and  conveyed  aboard,  and 
we  sailed  together  for  one  of  the  most  enjoyable  holidays 
I  ever  spent.  We  travelled  much  afoot  and  in  the  little 
native  carriages  called  "  stolkjaerre,"  just  jogging  along, 
staying  anywhere,  fishing  in  streams,  and  living  an 
open-air  life  which  the  increasing  flood  of  tourists  in 
after  years  have  made  much  less  possible.  We  both  came 
back  fitter  in  body  and  soul  for  our  winter's  work. 

My  father's  death  a  year  later  made  a  great  difference 
to  me,  my  mother  removing  to  live  with  my  grandmother 
at  Hampstead,  it  being  too  lonely  and  not  safe  for  her 
to  live  alone  in  East  London.  Twice  our  house  had  been 
broken  into  by  burglars,  though  both  times  fruitlessly. 
The  second  occasion  was  in  open  daylight  during  the 
hour  of  evening  service  on  a  Sunday.  Only  a  couple  of 
maids  would  have  been  in  the  house  had  I  not  been 
suffering  from  two  black  eyes  contracted  during  the 
Saturday's  football  game.  Though  I  had  accompanied 
the  others  out,  decidedly  my  appearance  might  have 
led  to  misinterpretations  in  church,  and  I  had  returned 
unnoticed.  The  men  escaped  by  some  method  which 
they  had  discovered  of  scaling  a  high  fence,  but  I  was 
close  behind  following  them  through  the  window  by 
which  they  had  entered.  Shortly  afterward  I  happened 


74  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

to  be  giving  evidence  at  the  Old  Bailey  on  one  of  the 
many  cases  of  assault  and  even  murder  where  the  victims 
were  brought  into  hospital  as  patients.  London  was  ring- 
ing with  the  tale  of  a  barefaced  murder  at  Murray  Hill  in 
North  London,  where  an  exceedingly  clever  piece  of  de- 
tective work,  an  old  lantern  discovered  in  a  pawnbroker's 
shop  in  Whitechapel  —  miles  away  from  the  scene  of  the 
crime  —  was  the  means  of  bringing  to  trial  four  of  the 
most  rascally  looking  villains  I  ever  saw.  The  trial  pre- 
ceded ours  and  we  had  to  witness  it.  One  of  the  gang 
had  turned  "Queen's  evidence"  to  save  his  own  neck. 
So  great  was  the  hatred  of  the  others  for  him  and  the 
desire  for  revenge  that  even  in  the  court  they  were  hand- 
cuffed and  in  separate  stands.  Fresh  from  my  own  Kttle 
fracas  I  learned  what  a  fool  I  had  been,  for  in  this  case 
also  the  deed  was  done  in  open  daylight,  and  the  lawn 
had  tight  wires  stretched  across  it.  The  young  son,  giving 
chase  as  I  did,  had  been  tripped  up  and  shot  through  his 
abdomen  for  his  pains.  He  had,  however,  crawled  back, 
made  his  will,  and  was  subsequently  only  saved  by  a 
big  operation.  He  looked  in  terrible  shape  when  giving 
evidence  at  the  trial. 

The  giving  of  expert  evidence  on  such  occasions  was 
the  only  opportunity  which  the  young  sawbones  had  of 
earning  money.  True  we  only  got  a  guinea  a  day  and 
expenses,  but  there  were  no  other  movie  shows  in  those 
days,  and  we  learned  a  lot  about  medical  jurisprudence, 
a  subject  which  always  greatly  interested  me.  It  was  no 
uncommon  sight  either  at  the  "London"  or  the  "Pop- 
lar," at  both  of  which  I  did  interne  work,  to  see  a  police- 
man always  sitting  behind  the  screen  at  the  foot  of  the 
patient's  bed.  One  man,  quite  a  nice  fellow  when  not 
occupied  in  crime,  had  when  furiously  drunk  killed  his 
wife  and  cut  his  own  throat.  By  the  curious  custom  of 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  75 

society  all  the  skill  and  money  that  the  hospital  could 
offer  to  save  a  most  valuable  life  was  as  usual  devoted  to 
restoring  this  man  to  health.  He  was  weaned  slowly  back 
from  the  grave  by  special  nurses  and  treatment,  till  it 
began  to  dawn  upon  him  that  he  might  have  to  stand 
his  trial.  He  would  ask  me  if  I  thought  he  would  have  to 
undergo  a  long  term,  for  he  had  not  been  conscious  of 
what  he  was  doing.  As  he  grew  better,  and  the  policeman 
arrived  to  watch  him,  he  decided  that  it  would  probably 
be  quite  a  long  time.  He  had  a  little  place  of  his  own 
somewhere,  and  he  used  to  have  chickens  and  other 
presents  sent  up  to  fellow  patients,  and  would  have  done 
so  to  the  nurses,  only  they  could  not  receive  them.  I  was 
not  personally  present  at  his  trial,  but  I  felt  really  sorry 
to  hear  that  they  hanged  him. 

Many  of  these  poor  fellows  were  only  prevented  from 
ending  their  own  lives  by  our  using  extreme  care.  The 
case  of  one  wretched  man,  driven  to  desperation,  I  still 
remember.  "Patient  male;  age  forty -five;  domestic 
trouble  —  fired  revolver  into  his  mouth.  Finding  no 
phenomena  of  interest  develop,  fired  a  second  chamber 
into  his  right  ear.  Still  no  symptoms  worthy  of  notice. 
Patient  threw  away  pistol  and  walked  to  hospital." 
Both  bullets  had  lodged  in  the  thick  parts  of  his  skull, 
and  doing  no  damage  were  left  there.  A  subsequent  note 
read:  "Patient  to-day  tried  to  cut  his  throat  with  a 
dinner-knife  which  he  had  hidden  in  his  bed.  Patient 
met  with  no  success."  Another  of  my  cases  which  inter- 
ested me  considerably  was  that  of  a  professional  burglar 
who  had  been  operated  upon  in  almost  every  part  of  the 
kingdom,  and  was  inclined  to  be  communicative,  as  the 
job  which  had  brought  him  to  hospital  had  cost  him  a 
broken  spine.  Very  little  hope  was  held  out  to  him  that 
he  would  ever  walk  again.  He  was  clear  of  murder,  for 


76  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

he  said  it  was  never  his  practice  to  carry  firearms,  being 
a  nervous  man  and  apt  to  use  them  if  he  had  them  and 
got  alarmed  when  busy  burglaring.  He  relied  chiefly  on 
his  extraordinary  agility  and  steady  head  to  escape.  His 
only  yarn,  however,  was  his  last.  He  and  a  friend  had 
been  detailed  by  the  gang  to  the  job  of  plundering  one 
of  a  row  of  houses.  The  plans  of  the  house  and  of  the 
enterprise  were  all  in  order,  but  some  unexpected  alarm 
was  given  and  he  fled  upstairs,  climbed  through  a  sky- 
light onto  the  roof,  and  ran  along  the  gables  of  the  tiles, 
not  far  ahead  of  the  police,  who  were  armed  and  firing 
at  him.  He  could  easily  have  gotten  away,  as  he  could 
run  along  the  coping  of  the  brick  parapet  without  turn- 
ing a  hair,  but  he  was  brought  up  by  a  narrow  side  street 
on  which  he  had  not  counted,  not  having  anticipated, 
like  cats,  a  battle  on  the  tiles.  It  was  only  some  twelve 
or  fifteen  feet  across  the  gap,  and  the  landing  on  the 
other  side  was  a  flat  roof.  Taking  it  all  at  a  rush  he  cleared 
the  street  successfully,  but  the  flat  roof,  black  with  ages 
of  soot,  proved  to  be  a  glass  skylight,  and  he  entered  a 
house  in  a  way  new  even  to  him.  His  falling  on  a  stone 
floor  many  feet  below  accounted  for  his  "unfortunate 
accident " !  After  many  months  in  bed,  the  man  took  an 
unexpected  turn,  his  back  mended,  and  with  only  a 
slight  leg  paralysis  he  was  able  to  return  to  the  outside 
world.  His  long  suffering  and  incarceration  in  hospital 
were  accepted  by  the  law  as  his  punishment,  and  he 
assured  me  by  all  that  he  held  sacred  that  he  intended 
to  retire  into  private  life.  Oddly  enough,  however,  while 
on  another  case,  I  saw  him  again  in  the  prisoner's  dock 
and  at  once  went  over  and  spoke  to  him. 

"Drink  this  time,  Doctor,"  he  said.  "I  was  down  on 
my  luck  and  the  barkeeper  went  out  and  left  his  till 
open.  I  climbed  over  and  got  the  cash,  but  there  was  so 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  77 

little  space  between  the  bar  and  the  wall  that  with  my 
stiff  back  I  could  n't  for  the  life  of  me  get  back.  I  was 
jammed  like  a  stopper  in  a  bottle." 

Among  many  interesting  experiences,  one  especially 
I  shall  never  forget.  Like  the  others,  it  occurred  during 
my  service  for  Sir  Frederick  Treves  as  house-surgeon, 
and  I  believe  he  told  the  story.  A  very  badly  burned 
woman  had  been  brought  into  hospital.  Her  dress  had 
somehow  got  soaked  in  paraflSn  and  had  then  taken  fire. 
Her  terribly  extensive  burns  left  no  hope  whatever  of  her 
recovery,  and  only  the  conventions  of  society  kept  us 
from  giving  the  poor  creature  the  relief  of  euthanasia,  or 
some  cup  of  laudanum  negus.  But  the  law  was  inter- 
ested. A  magistrate  was  brought  to  the  bedside  and  the 
husband  sent  for.  The  nature  of  the  evidence,  the  mean- 
ing of  an  oath,  the  importance  of  the  poor  creature 
acknowledging  that  her  words  were  spoken  "in  hopeless 
fear  of  immediate  death,"  were  all  duly  impressed  upon 
what  remained  of  her  mind.  The  police  then  brought  in 
the  savage,  degraded-looking  husband,  and  made  him 
stand  between  two  policemen  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  fac- 
ing his  mangled  wife.  The  magistrate,  after  preliminary 
questions,  asked  her  to  make  her  dying  statement  as  to 
how  she  came  by  her  death.  There  was  a  terrible  moment 
of  silence.  It  seemed  as  if  her  spirit  were  no  longer  able 
to  respond  to  the  stimuli  of  life  on  earth.  Then  a  sudden 
rebound  appeared  to  take  place,  her  eyes  lit  up  with  a 
flash  of  light,  and  even  endeavouring  to  raise  her  piteous 
body,  she  said,  "It  was  an  accident.  Judge.  I  upset  the 
lamp  myself,  so  help  me  God";  and  just  for  one  moment 
her  eyes  met  those  of  her  miserable  husband.  It  was  the 
last  time  she  spoke. 

Tragedy  and  comedy  ran  hand  in  hand  even  in  this 
work.  St.  Patrick's  Day  always  made  the  hospital  busy. 


78  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

just  as  Christmas  was  the  season  for  burned  children. 
Beer  in  an  East  London  "pub"  was  generally  served  in 
pewter  pots,  as  they  were  not  easily  broken.  A  common 
head  injury  was  a  circular  scalp  cut  made  by  the  heavy 
bottom  rim,  a  wound  which  bled  horribly.  A  woman  was 
brought  in  on  one  St.  Patrick's  Day,  her  scalp  turned  for- 
ward over  her  face  and  her  long  hair  a  mass  of  clotted 
blood  from  such  a  stroke,  made  while  she  was  on  the 
ground.  When  the  necessary  readjustments  had  been 
made  and  she  was  leaving  hospital  cured,  we  asked  her 
what  had  been  the  cause  of  the  trouble.  "'T  was  just  an 
accidint,  yer  know.  Sure,  me  an'  another  loidy  was  just 
havin'  a  few  words." 

On  another  occasion  late  at  night,  we  were  called  out 
of  bed  by  a  cantankerous,  half-drunken  fellow  whom 
the  night  porter  could  not  pacify.  "I'm  a  regular  sub- 
scriber to  this  hospital,  and  I  have  never  had  my  dues 
yet,"  he  kept  protesting.  A  new  drug  to  produce  im- 
mediate vomiting  had  just  been  put  on  the  market,  and 
as  it  was  exactly  the  treatment  he  required,  we  gave  him 
an  injection.  To  our  dismay,  though  the  medicine  is  in 
common  use  to-day,  either  the  poison  which  he  had  been 
drinking  or  the  drug  itself  caused  a  collapse  followed  by 
head  symptoms.  He  was  admitted,  his  head  shaved  and 
icebags  applied,  with  the  result  that  next  day  he  was 
quite  well  again.  But  when  he  left  he  had,  instead  of  a 
superabundance  of  curly,  auburn  hair,  a  polished  white 
laiob  oiled  and  shining  like  a  State  House  at  night.  We 
debated  whether  his  subscription  would  be  as  regular  in 
future,  though  he  professed  to  be  profoundly  grateful. 

I  have  digressed,  but  the  intimacy  which  grew  up  be- 
tween some  of  my  patients  and  myself  seemed  worth 
while  recounting,  for  they  showed  me  what  I  never  in 
any  other  way  could  have  understood  about  the  seamy 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  79 

side  of  life  in  great  cities,  of  its  terrible  tragedies  and 
pathos,  of  how  much  good  there  is  in  the  worst,  and  how 
much  need  of  courage,  and  what  vast  opportunities  lie 
before  those  who  accept  the  service  of  man  as  their  serv- 
ice to  God.  It  proved  to  me  how  infinitely  more  needed 
are  unselfish  deeds  than  orthodox  words,  and  how  much 
the  churches  must  learn  from  the  Labour  Party,  the 
Socialist  Party,  the  Trades-Union,  before  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  our  fellow  beings,  with  all  their  hopes  and  fears, 
loves  and  aspirations,  have  a  fair  chance  to  make  good. 
I  learned  also  to  hate  the  liquor  traflSc  with  a  loathing  of 
my  soul.  I  met  peers  of  the  realm  honoured  with  titles 
because  they  had  grown  rich  on  the  degradation  of  my 
friends.  I  saw  lives  damned,  cruelties  of  every  kind  per- 
petrated, jails  and  hospitals  filled,  misery,  want,  starva- 
tion, murder,  all  caused  by  men  who  fattened  off  the 
profits  and  posed  as  gentlemen  and  great  people.  I  have 
seen  men's  mouths  closed  whose  business  in  life  it  was 
to  speak  out  against  this  accursed  trade.  I  have  seen 
men  driven  from  the  profession  of  priests  of  God,  mak- 
ing the  Church  a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  men  who  knew 
values  just  as  well  as  those  trained  in  the  universities  do, 
all  through  alcohol,  alcohol,  alcohol.  This  awful  war  has 
been  dragging  its  weary  course  for  over  four  years  now, 
and  yet  England  has  not  tackled  this  curse  which  is 
throttling  her.  We  sing  "God  save  the  King,"  and  pre- 
tend to  believe  in  the  prayer,  and  yet  we  will  not  face 
this  glaring  demon  in  our  midst.  Words  may  clothe  ideas, 
but  it  takes  deeds  to  realize  them. 

My  parents  having  gone,  it  became  necessary  for  me 
to  find  lodgings  —  which  I  did,  "unfurnished,"  in  the 
house  of  a  Portuguese  widow.  Her  husband,  who  had  a 
good  family  name,  had  gone  down  in  the  world,  and  had 


80  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

disappeared  with  another  "lady."  The  eldest  son,  a 
mathematical  genius,  had  been  able  to  pay  his  way 
through  Cambridge  University  by  the  scholarships  and 
prizes  which  he  had  won.  One  beautiful  little  dark-eyed 
daughter  of  seven  was  playing  in  a  West  End  Theatre  as 
the  dormouse  in  "Alice  in  Wonderland."  She  was  second 
fiddle  to  Alice  herself,  also,  and  could  sing  all  her  songs. 
Her  pay  was  some  five  pounds  a  week,  poor  enough  for 
the  attraction  she  proved,  but  more  than  all  the  rest  of 
the  family  put  together  earned.  At  that  time  I  never 
went  to  theatres.  Acquaintances  had  persuaded  me  that 
so  many  of  the  girls  were  ruined  on  the  stage  that  for  a 
man  taking  any  interest  in  Christian  work  whatever,  it 
was  wrong  to  attend.  Moreover,  among  my  acquaintances 
there  were  not  a  few  theatre  fans,  and  I  had  nothing  in 
common  with  them.  The  "dormouse,"  however,  used  to 
come  up  and  say  her  parts  for  my  benefit,  and  that  of 
occasional  friends,  and  was  so  modest  and  winsome,  and 
her  earnings  so  invaluable  to  the  family,  that  I  entirely 
altered  my  opinion.  Then  and  there  I  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  drama  was  an  essential  part  of  art,  and 
that  those  who  were  trying  to  elevate  and  cleanse  it,  like 
Sir  Henry  Irving,  whose  son  I  had  met  at  Marlborough, 
must  have  the  support  of  a  public  who  demanded  clean 
plays  and  good  conditions  both  in  front  and  behind  the 
screen.  When  I  came  to  London  my  father  had  asked 
me  not  to  go  to  anything  but  Shakespearian  or  equally 
well-recognized  plays  until  I  was  twenty-one.  Only  once 
did  I  enter  a  music  hall  and  I  had  plenty  to  satisfy  me 
in  a  very  few  minutes.  Vaudevilles  are  better  than  in 
those  days.  The  censor  does  good  work,  but  it  is  still  the 
demand  which  creates  the  supply,  and  whatever  im- 
provement has  occurred  has  been  largely  due  to  the  taste 
of  the  patrons.  Medical  students  need  all  the  open  air 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  81 

they  can  get  in  order  to  keep  body  and  soul  fit,  and  our 
contempt  for  the  theatre  fan  was  justifiable. 

My  new  lodgings  being  close  to  Victoria  Park  afforded 
the  opportunity  for  training  if  one  were  unconventional. 
To  practise  throwing  the  sixteen-pound  hammer  re- 
quires rough  ground  and  plenty  of  space,  and  as  I  was 
scheduled  for  that  at  the  inter-hospital  sports,  it  was 
necessary  to  work  when  not  too  many  disinterested 
parties  were  around.  Even  an  East-Ender's  skull  is  not 
hammer-proof,  as  I  had  seen  when  a  poor  woman  was 
brought  into  hospital  with  five  circular  holes  in  her  head, 
the  result  of  blows  inflicted  by  her  husband  with  a  ham- 
mer. The  only  excuse  which  the  ruffian  offered  for  the 
murder  was  that  she  had  forgotten  to  wake  him,  he  had 
been  late,  and  lost  his  job. 

A  number  of  the  boys  in  my  class  were  learning  to 
swim.  There  was  only  one  bathing  lake  and  once  the 
waters  were  troubled  we  drew  the  line  at  going  in  to  give 
lessons.  So  we  used  to  meet  at  the  gate  at  the  hour  of 
opening  in  the  morning,  and  thus  be  going  back  before 
most  folks  were  moving.  Nor  did  we  always  wait  for  the 
park  keeper,  but  often  scaled  the  gates  and  so  obtained 
an  even  more  exclusive  dip.  Many  an  evening  we  would 
also  "flannel,"  and  train  round  and  round  the  park,  or 
Hackney  Common,  to  improve  one's  wind  before  some 
big  event.  For  diet  at  that  time  I  used  oatmeal,  milk,  and 
eggs,  and  very  little  or  no  meat.  It  was  cheaper  and 
seemed  to  give  me  more  endurance;  and  the  real  value  of 
money  was  dawning  on  me. 

Victoria  Park  is  one  of  those  open  forums  where  every 
man  with  a  sore  spot  goes  out  to  air  his  grievance.  On 
Sundays  there  were  little  groups  around  the  trees  where 
orators  debated  on  everything  from  a  patent  medicine 
to  the  nature  of  God.  Charles  Bradlaugh  and  Mrs.  Annie 


82  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Besant  were  associated  together  in  iconoclastic  efforts 
against  orthodox  religion,  and  there  was  so  much  truth 
in  some  of  their  contentions  that  they  were  making  no 
little  disturbance.  Hanging  on  their  skirts  were  a  whole 
crowd  of  ignorant,  dogmatic  atheists,  who  published  a 
paper  called  "The  Freethinker,"  which,  while  it  was  a 
villainous  and  contemptible  rag,  appealed  to  the  passions 
and  prejudices  of  the  partially  educated.  To  answer  the 
specious  arguments  of  their  propaganda  an  association 
known  as  the  Christian  Evidence  Society  used  to  send 
out  lecturers.  One  of  them  became  quite  famous  for  his 
clever  arguments  and  answers,  his  ready  wit,  and  really 
extensive  reading.  He  was  an  Antiguan,  a  black  man 
named  Edwards,  and  had  been  a  sailor  before  the  mast. 
I  met  him  at  the  parish  house  of  an  Episcopal  clergyman 
of  a  near-by  church,  who,  under  the  caption  of  Christian 
socialism,  ran  all  kinds  of  social  agencies  that  really 
found  their  way  to  the  hearts  of  the  people.  His  messages 
were  so  much  more  in  deeds  than  in  words  that  he  greatly 
appealed  to  me,  and  I  transferred  my  allegiance  to  his 
church,  which  was  always  well  filled.  I  particularly  re- 
member among  his  efforts  the  weekly  parish  dance.  My 
religious  acquaintances  were  apt  to  class  all  such  simple 
amusements  in  a  sort  of  general  category  as  "works  of 
the  Devil,"  and  turn  deaf  ears  to  every  invitation  to 
point  out  any  evil  results,  being  satisfied  with  their  own 
statement  that  it  was  the  "thin  edge  of  the  wedge."  This 
good  man,  however,  was  very  obviously  driving  a  wedge 
into  the  hearts  of  many  of  his  poor  neighbours  who  in 
those  days  found  no  opportunity  for  relief  in  innocent 
pleasures  from  the  sordid  round  of  life  in  the  drab  pur- 
lieus of  Bethnal  Green.  This  clergyman  was  a  forerunner 
of  his  neighbour,  the  famous  Samuel  Barnett  of  Mile 
End,  who  thought  out,  started,  and  for  many  years  pre- 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  83 

sided  over  Toynbee  House,  the  first  big  university  settle- 
ment in  East  London.  His  workers  preached  their  gospel 
through  phrases  and  creeds  which  they  accepted  with 
mental  reservations,  but  just  exactly  in  such  ways  as 
they  believed  in  absolutely.  At  first  it  used  to  send  a 
shiver  down  my  spine  to  find  a  church  worker  who  did  n't 
believe  in  the  Creed,  and  stumbled  over  all  our  funda- 
mentals. At  first  it  amazed  me  that  such  men  would  pay 
their  own  expenses  to  live  in  a  place  like  Wliitechapel, 
only  to  work  on  drain  committees,  as  delinquent  land- 
lord mentors,  or  just  to  give  special  educational  chances 
to  promising  minds,  or  physical  training  to  unfit  bodies. 
Yet  one  saw  in  their  efforts  undeniable  messages  of  real 
love.  Personally  I  could  only  occasionally  run  up  there 
to  meet  friends  in  residence  or  attend  an  art  exhibition, 
but  they  taught  me  many  lessons. 

Exactly  opposite  the  hospital  was  Oxford  House,  only 
two  minutes  distant,  which  combined  definite  doctrinal 
religion  with  social  work.  Being  an  Oxford  effort  it  had 
great  attractions  for  me.  Moreover,  right  alongside  it  in 
the  middle  of  a  disused  sugar  refinery  I  had  hired  the 
yard,  converted  it  into  a  couple  of  lawn-tennis  courts, 
and  ran  a  small  club.  There  I  first  met  the  famous  Dr. 
Hensley  Henson,  now  Bishop  of  Hereford,  and  also  the 
present  Bishop  of  London,  Dr.  Winnington-Ingram  — 
a  good  all-round  athlete.  He  used  to  visit  in  our  wards, 
and  as  we  had  a  couple  of  fives  courts,  a  game  which 
takes  little  time  and  gives  much  exercise,  we  used  to 
have  an  afternoon  off  together,  once  a  week,  when  he 
came  over  to  hospital.  Neither  of  these  splendid  men 
were  dignitaries  in  those  days,  or  I  am  afraid  they  would 
have  found  us  medicals  much  more  stand-oflSsh.  I  may 
as  well  admit  that  we  had  not  then  learned  to  have  any 
respect  for  bishops  or  church  magnates  generally.   We 


84  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

liked  both  of  these  men  because  they  were  unconven- 
tional and  good  sports,  and  especially  in  that  they  were 
not  afraid  to  tackle  the  atheist's  propaganda  in  the  open. 
I  have  seen  Dr.  Henson  in  Whitechapel  debating  alone 
against  a  hall  full  of  opponents  and  with  a  fairness  and 
infinite  restraint,  convincing  those  open  to  reason  that 
they  were  mistaken.  Moreover,  I  have  seen  Dr.  Ingram 
doing  just  the  same  thing  standing  on  a  stone  in  the 
open  park.  It  may  all  sound  very  silly  when  one  knows 
that  by  human  minds,  or  to  the  human  mind,  the  In- 
finite can  never  be  demonstrated  as  a  mathematical 
proposition.  But  the  point  was  that  these  clergy  were 
proving  that  they  were  real  men  —  men  who  had  courage 
as  well  as  faith,  who  believed  in  themselves  and  their 
message,  who  deserved  the  living  which  they  were  sup- 
posed to  make  out  of  orthodoxy.  This  the  audience  knew 
was  more  than  could  be  said  of  many  of  the  opponents. 
Christ  himself  showed  his  superb  manhood  in  just  such 
speaking  out. 

Indelibly  impressed  on  my  mind  still  is  an  occasion 
when  one  of  the  most  blatant  and  vicious  of  these  op- 
ponents of  religion  fell  ill.  A  Salvation  Army  lass  found 
him  deserted  and  in  poverty,  nursed  and  looked  after 
him  and  eventually  made  a  new  man  of  him. 

Far  and  away  the  most  popular  of  the  Park  speakers 
was  the  Antiguan.  His  arguments  were  so  clever  it  was 
obvious  that  he  was  well  and  widely  read.  His  absolute 
understanding  of  the  crowd  and  his  witty  repartee  used 
frequently  to  cause  his  opponents  to  lose  their  tempers, 
and  that  was  always  their  undoing.  The  crowd  as  a  rule 
was  very  fair  and  could  easily  distinguish  arguments 
from  abuse.  Thus,  on  one  Sunday  the  debate  was  as  to 
whether  nature  was  God.  The  atheist  representative  was 
a  very  loud-voiced  demagogue,  who  when  angry  betrayed 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  85 

his  Hibernian  origin  very  markedly.  Having  been  com- 
pletely worsted  and  the  laugh  turned  against  him  by  a 
clever  correction  of  some  one's,  he  used  the  few  minutes 
given  him  to  reply  in  violent  abuse,  ending  up  that 
"ladies  and  gentlemen  did  not  come  out  on  holidays  to 
spend  their  time  being  taught  English  by  a  damned 
nigger." 

"Sir,"  Edwards  answered  from  the  crowd,  "I  am  a 
British  subject,  born  on  the  island  of  Antigua,  and  as 
much  an  Englishman  as  any  Irishman  in  the  country." 

Edwards  possessed  an  inexhaustible  stock  of  good- 
humour  and  his  laugh  could  be  heard  halfway  across  the 
Park.  As  soon  as  his  turn  came  to  mount  the  stone,  he 
got  the  crowd  so  good-natured  that  they  became  angry 
at  the  interruptions  of  the  enemy,  and  when  some  one 
suggested  that  if  nature  were  that  man's  God,  the  near-by 
duckpond  was  the  natural  place  for  him,  there  was  a 
rush  for  him,  and  for  several  subsequent  Sundays  he  was 
not  in  evidence.  Edwards  was  a  poor  man,  his  small 
salary  and  incessant  generosity  left  him  nothing  for 
holidays,  and  he  was  killing  himself  with  overwork.  So 
we  asked  him  to  join  us  in  the  new  house  which  we  were 
fitting  up  in  Palestine  Place.  He  most  gladly  did  so  and 
added  enormously  to  our  fun.  Unfortunately  tubercu- 
losis long  ago  got  its  grip  upon  him,  and  removed  a  val- 
uable life  from  East  London. 

It  was  a  queer  little  beehive  in  which  we  lived  in  those 
days,  and  a  more  cosmopolitan  crowd  could  hardly  have 
been  found:  one  young  doctor  who  has  since  made  his 
name  and  fortune  in  Australia;  another  in  whose  rooms 
were  nearly  a  hundred  cups  for  prowess  in  nearly  every 
form  of  athletics,  and  who  also  has  "made  good"  in 
professional  life,  besides  several  others  who  for  shorter 
or  longer  periods  were  allotted  rooms  in  our  house. 


-^ 


86  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Among  the  more  unusual  was  the  "C.  M.,"  a  Brahmin 
from  India,  a  priest  in  his  youth,  who  had  been  brought 
back  to  England  by  some  society  to  be  educated  in  med- 
ical missionary  work,  but  whom  for  some  reason  they 
had  dropped.  For  a  short  time  a  clever  young  Russian  of 
Hebrew  extraction  who  was  studying  for  the  Church 
helped  to  render  our  common-room  social  engagements 
almost  international  affairs. 
y^  (As  I  write  this  I  am  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina  J 
and  I  see  how  hard  it  will  be  for  an  American  to  under- 
stand the  possibility  of  such  a  motley  assembly  being 
reasonable  or  even  proper.  It  seems  to  me  down  here 
that  there  must  have  been  odd  feelings  sometimes  in 
those  days.  I  can  only  say,  however,  that  I  never  per- 
sonally even  thought  of  it.  East  London  is  so  democratic 
/  that  one's  standards  are  simply  those  of  the  value  of  the 
man's  soul  as  we  saw  it.  If  he  had  been  yellow  with  pink 
stripes  it  honestly  would  not  have  mattered  one  iota  to 
most  of  us. 

It  so  happened  that  there  was  at  that  time  in  hospital 
under  my  care  a  patient  known  as  "the  elephant  man." 
He  had  been  starring  under  that  title  in  a  cheap  vaude- 
ville, had  been  seen  by  some  of  the  students,  and  invited 
over  to  be  shown  to  and  studied  by  our  best  physicians. 
The  poor  fellow  was  really  exceedingly  sensitive  about  his 
most  extraordinary  appearance.  The  disease  was  called 
"leontiasis,"  and  consisted  of  an  enormous  over-devel- 
opment of  bone  and  skin  on  one  side.  His  head  and  face 
were  so  deformed  as  really  to  resemble  a  big  animal's 
head  with  a  trunk.  My  arms  would  not  reach  around  his 
hat.  A  special  room  in  a  yard  was  allotted  to  him,  and 
several  famous  people  came  to  see  him  —  among  them 
Queen  Alexandra,  then  the  Princess  of  Wales,  who  after- 
ward  sent  him  an  autographed  photograph  of  herself. 


AT  THE  LONDON. HOSPITAL  87 

He  kept  it  in  his  room,  which  was  known  as  the  "ele- 
phant house,"  and  it  always  suggested  beauty  and  the 
beast.  Only  at  night  could  the  man  venture  out  of  doors, 
and  it  was  no  unusual  thing  in  the  dusk  of  nightfall  to 
meet  him  walking  up  and  down  in  the  little  courtyard. 

/  He  used  to  talk  freely  of  how  he  would  look  in  a  huge 
bottle  of  alcohol  —  an  end  to  which  in  his  imagination 
he  was  fated  to  come.  He  was  of  a  very  cheerful  disposi- 
tion and  pathetically  proud  of  his  left  side  which  was 
normal.  Very  suddenly  one  day  he  died  —  the  reason 
assigned  being  that  his  head  fell  forward  and  choked  him, 
being  too  heavy  for  him  to  lift  up. 

In  1886  I  passed  my  examinations  and  duly  became  a 
member  of  the  College  of  Physicians  and  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  of  England;  and  sought  some  field 
for  change  and  rest,  where  also  I  could  use  my  newly 
acquired  license  to  my  own,  if  to  no  one  else's,  benefit. 
Among  the  patients  who  came  to  the  London  Hospital, 
there  were  now  and  again  fishermen  from  the  large  fishing 
fleets  of  the  North  Sea.  They  lived  out,  as  it  were,  on 
floating  villages,  sending  their  fish  to  market  every  day 
by  fast  cutters.  Every  two  or  three  months,  as  their  turn 
came  round,  a  vessel  would  leave  for  the  home  port  on 
the  east  coast,  being  permitted,  or  supposed  to  be  per- 
mitted, a  day  at  home  for  each  full  week  at  sea.  As  the 
fleets  kept  the  sea  summer  and  winter  and  the  boats 
were  small,  not  averaging  over  sixty  tons,  it  was  a  haz- 
ardous calling.  The  North  Sea  is  nowhere  deeper  than 
thirty  fathoms,  much  of  it  being  under  twenty,  and  in 

^some  places  only  five.  Indeed,  it  is  a  recently  sunken  and 
still  sinking  portion  of  Europe,  so  much  so  that  the 
coasts  on  both  sides  are  constantly  receding,  and  when 
Heligoland  was  handed  over  by  the  English  to  the 
Kaiser,  it  was  said  that  he  would  have  to  keep  jacking 


88  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

it  up  or  soon  there  would  be  none  left.  Shallow  waters 
exposed  to  the  fierce  gales  which  sweep  the  German 
Ocean  make  deep  and  dangerous  seas,  which  readily 
break  and  wash  the  decks  of  craft  with  low  freeboard, 
such  as  the  North  Sea  vessels  are  obliged  to  have  in  order 
to  get  boats  in  and  out  to  ferry  their  fish  to  the  cutter. 

There  being  no  skilled  aid  at  hand,  the  quickest  way 
to  get  help  used  to  be  to  send  an  injured  man  to  market 
with  the  fish.  Often  it  was  a  long  journey  of  many  days, 
simple  fractures  became  compound,  and  limbs  and  facul- 
ties were  often  thus  lost.  It  so  happened  that  Sir  Fred- 
J  erick  Treves  had  himself  a  love  for  navigating  in  small 
sailing  craft.  He  had  made  it  a  practice  to  cross  the 
English  Channel  to  Calais  in  a  sailing  lugger  every  Box- 
ing Day  —  that  is,  the  day  after  Christmas.  He  was 
especially  interested  in  those  "that  go  down  to  the  sea 
in  ships**  arid  had  recently  made  a  trip  among  the  fishing 
fleets.  He  told  me  that  a  small  body  of  men,  interested 
in  the  religious  and  social  welfare  of  the  deep-sea  fisher- 
men, had  chartered  a  small  fishing  smack,  sent  her  out 
among  the  fishermen  to  hold  religious  services  of  a  simple, 
unconventional  type,  in  order  to  afford  the  men  an  al- 
ternative to  the  grog  vessels  when  fishing  was  slack,  and 
to  carry  first  aid,  the  skipper  of  the  vessel  being  taught 
ambulance  work.  They  wanted,  however,  very  much  to 
get  a  young  doctor  to  go  out,  who  cared  also  for  the 
spiritual  side  of  the  work,  to  see  if  they  could  use  the 
additional  attraction  of  proper  medical  aid  to  gain  the 
men's  sympathies.  His  advice  to  me  was  to  go  and  have 
a  look  at  it.  "If  you  go  in  January  you  will  see  some  fine 
seascapes,  anyhow.  Don't  go  in  summer  when  all  of  the 
old  ladies  go  for  a  rest." 

I  therefore  applied  to  go  out  the  following  January, 
and  that  fall,  while  working  near  the  Great  London 


''P.- 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  89 

docks,  I  used  often  to  look  at  the  tall  East  Indiamen, 
thinking  that  I  soon  should  be  aboard  just  such  a  vessel 
in  the  North  Sea.  It  was  dark  and  raining  when  my 
train  ran  into  Yarmouth,  and  a  dripping,  stout  fisherman 
in  a  blue  uniform  met  me  at  that  then  unattractive  and 
ill-lighted  terminus.  He  had  brought  a  forlorn  "growler" 
or  four-wheeled  cab.  Climbing  in  we  drove  a  mile  or  more 
along  a  deserted  road,  and  drew  up  at  last  apparently  at 
the  back  of  beyond. 

"Where  is  the  ship.'*"  I  asked. 

"Why,  those  are  her  topmasts,"  replied  my  guide, 
pointing  to  two  posts  projecting  from  the  sand.  "The 
tide  is  low  and  she  is  hidden  by  the  quay." 

"Heavens!"  I  thought;  "she's  no  tea  clipper,  any- 
how." 

I  climbed  up  the  bank  and  peered  down  in  the  dark- 
ness at  the  hull  of  a  small  craft,  a  little  larger  than  our 
old  Roysterer.  She  was  just  discernible  by  the  dim  rays 
of  the  anchor  light.  I  was  hesitating  as  to  whether  I 
should  n't  drive  back  to  Yarmouth  and  return  to  London 
when  a  cheery  voice  on  deck  called  out  a  hearty  welcome. 
What  big  things  hang  on  a  smile  and  a  cheery  word  no 
man  can  ever  say.  But  it  broke  the  spell  this  time  and 
I  had  my  cabby  unload  my  bags  on  the  bank  and  bade 
him  good-night.  As  his  wheels  rumbled  away  into  the 
rain  and  dark,  I  felt  that  my  cables  were  cut  beyond 
recall.  Too  late  to  save  me,  the  cheery  voice  shouted, 
"Mind  the  rigging,  it's  just  tarred  and  greased."  I  was 
already  sliding  down  and  sticking  to  it  as  I  went.  Small 
as  the  vessel  was  she  was  absolutely  spotless.  Her  steward, 
who  cooked  for  all  hands,  was  smart  and  in  a  snow-white 
suit.  The  contrast  between-decks  and  that  above  was 
very  comforting,  though  my  quarters  were  small.  The 
crew  were  all  stocky,  good-humoured,  and  independent. 


90  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Democratic  as  East  London  had  made  me,  they  im- 
pressed me  very  favourably,  and  I  began  to  look  forward 
to  the  venture  with  real  pleasure. 

Drink  was  the  worst  enemy  of  these  men.  The  quay- 
sides of  the  fisherman's  quarters  teemed  with  low  saloons. 
Wages  were  even  paid  off  in  them  or  their  annexes,  and 
grog  vessels,  luring  the  men  aboard  with  cheap  tobacco 
and  low  literature,  plied  their  nefarious  calling  with  the 
fleets,  and  were  the  death,  body  and  soul,  of  many  of 
these  fine  specimens  of  manhood. 

There  was  never  any  question  as  to  the  real  object  of 
the  Mission  to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen.  The  words  "Heal 
the  sick"  carved  in  large  letters  adorned  the  starboard 
bow.  "Preach  the  Word"  was  on  the  port,  and  around 
the  brass  rim  of  the  wheel  ran  the  legend,  "Jesus  said. 
Follow  me  and  I  will  make  you  fishers  of  men."  Thirty 
years  ago  we  were  more  conventional  than  to-day,  and 
I  was  much  surprised  to  learn  from  our  skipper  that  we 
were  bound  to  Ostend  to  ship  four  tons  of  tobacco,  sent 
over  from  England  for  us  in  bond,  as  he  might  not  take 
it  out  consigned  to  the  high  seas.  In  Belgium,  however, 
no  duty  was  paid.  The  only  trouble  was  that  our  Vfessel, 
to  help  pay  its  expenses,  carried  fishing  gear,  and  as 
a  fishing  vessel  could  not  get  a  clearance  in  Belgium. 
Our  nets  and  beams,  therefore,  had  to  go  out  to  the 
fishing  grounds  in  a  friendly  trawler  while  we  passed  as 
a  mercantile  marine  during  the  time  we  took  on  our 
cargo. 

So  bitter  was  the  cold  that  in  the  harbour  we  got  frozen 
in  and  were  able  to  skate  up  the  canals.  We  had  event- 
ually to  get  a  steamer  to  go  around  us  and  smash  our  ice 
bonds  when  we  were  again  ready  for  sea.  During  the 
next  two  months  we  saw  no  land  except  Heligoland  and 
Terschelling  —  or  Skilling,  as  the  fishermen  called  it  — 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  91 

far  away  in  the  ofl3ng.  Nor  was  our  deck  once  clear  of  ice 
and  snow  during  all  the  time. 

Our  duty  was  to  visit  as  many  fleets  as  we  could,  and 
arrange  with  some  reliable  vessel  to  take  a  stock  of  to- 
bacco for  the  use  of  their  special  fleet.  The  ship  was  to 
carry  about  six  feet  of  blue  bunting  on  her  foretopmast 
stay,  a  couple  of  fathoms  above  her  bowsprit  end,  so 
that  all  the  fleet  might  know  her.  She  was  to  sell  the 
tobacco  at  a  fixed  price  that  just  covered  the  cost,  and 
undersold  the  *' coper"  by  fifty  per  cent.  She  was  to 
hoist  her  flag  for  business  every  morning,  while  the  small 
boats  were  out  boarding  fish  on  the  carrier,  and  was  to 
lie  as  far  to  leeward  of  the  coper  as  possible  so  that  the 
men  could  not  go  to  both.  Nineteen  such  floating  depots 
were  eventually  arranged  for,  with  the  precaution  that  if 
any  one  of  them  had  to  return  to  port,  he  should  bring 
no  tobacco  home,  but  hand  over  his  stock  and  accounts 
to  a  reliable  friend.  ' 

These  deep-sea  fisheries  were  a  revelation  to  me,  and 
every  hour  of  the  long  trip  I  enjoyed.  It  was  amazing  to 
me  to  find  over  twenty  thousand  men  and  boys  afloat  — 
the  merriest,  cheerfullest  lot  which  I  had  ever  met.  They 
were  hail-fellow-well-met  with  every  one,  and  never 
thought  of  deprivation  or  danger.  Clothing,  food,  cus- 
toms, were  all  subordinated  to  utility.  They  were  the 
nearest  possible  thing  to  a  community  of  big  boys,  only 
needing  a  leader.  In  eflSciency  and  for  their  daring  re- 
sourcefulness in  physical  diflSculties  and  dangers,  they 
were  absolutely  in  a  class  by  themselves,  embodying  all 
the  traits  of  character  which  make  men  love  to  read  the 
stories  of  the  buccaneers  and  other  seamen  of  the  six- 
teenth-century period. 

Each  fleet  had  its  admiral  and  vice-admiral,  appointed 
partly  by  the  owner,  and  partly  by  the  skippers  of  the 


92  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

vessels.  The  devil-may-care  spirit  was  always  a  great 
factor  with  the  men.  The  admiral  directed  operations  by 
flags  in  the  daytime  and  by  rockets  at  night,  thus  indi- 
cating what  the  fleet  was  to  do  and  where  they  were  to 
fish.  Generally  he  had  the  fastest  boat,  and  the  cutters, 
hunting  for  the  fleet  always  lay  just  astern  of  the  ad- 
miral, the  morning  after  their  arrival.  Hundreds  of  men 
would  come  for  letters,  packages,  to  load  fish,  to  get  the 
news  of  what  their  last  assignment  fetched  in  market. 
Moreover,  a  kind  of  Parliament  was  held  aboard  to  con- 
sider policies  and  hear  complaints. 

At  first  it  was  a  great  surprise  to  me  how  these  men 
knew  where  they  were,  for  we  never  saw  anything  but 
sky  and  sea,  and  not  even  the  admirals  carried  a  chro- 
nometer or  could  work  out  a  longitude;  and  only  a  small 
percentage  of  the  skippers  could  read  or  write.  They  all, 
however,  carried  a  sextant  and  could  by  rule  of  thumb 
find  a  latitude  roughly.  But  that  was  only  done  at  a  pinch. 
The  armed  lead  was  the  fisherman's  friend.  It  was  a 
heavy  lead  with  a  cup  on  the  bottom  filled  fresh  each 
7  time  with  sticky  grease.  When  used,  the  depth  was  always 
called  out  by  the  watch,  and  the  kind  of  sand,  mud,  or 
rock  which  stuck  to  the  grease  shown  to  the  skipper. 
"Fifteen  fathoms  and  coffee  grounds  —  must  be  on  the 
tail  end  of  the  Dogger.  Put  her  a  bit  more  to  the  west- 
ward, boy,"  he  would  remark,  and  think  no  more  about 
it,  though  he  might  have  been  three  or  four  days  looking 
for  his  fleet,  and  not  spoken  to  a  soul  since  he  left  land. 
I  remember  one  skipper  used  to  have  the  lead  brought 
down  below,  and  he  could  tell  by  the  grit  between  his 
teeth  after  a  couple  of  soundings  which  way  to  steer.  It 
sounds  strange  even  now,  but  it  was  so  universal,  being 
just  second-nature  to  the  men,  who  from  boyhood  had 
lived  on  the  sea,  that  we  soon  ceased  to  marvel  at  it. 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  93 

Skippers  were  only  just  being  obliged  to  have  certificates. 
These  they  obtained  by  viva  voce  examinations.  You 
would  sometimes  hear  an  aspiring  student,  a  great  black- 
bearded  pirate  over  forty-seven  inches  around  the  chest, 
and  possibly  the  father  of  eight  or  ten  children,  as  he 
stamped  about  in  his  watch  keeping  warm,  repeating  the 
courses  —  "East  end  of  the  Dogger  to  Horn  S.E.  by  E. 
2  and  W.  point  of  the  island  [Heligoland]  to  Barkum 
S.  2  W.  Ower  Light  to  Hazebrough  N.N.W."  —  and  so 
on.  Their  memories  were  not  burdened  by  a  vast  range 
of  facts,  but  in  these  things  they  were  the  nearest  imag- 
inable to  Blind  Tom,  the  famous  slave  musician. 

Our  long  round  only  occupied  us  about  a  month,  and 
after  that  we  settled  down  with  the  fleet  known  as  the 
Great  Northerners.  Others  were  the  Short  Blues,  the 
Rashers  (because  they  were  streaked  like  a  piece  of 
bacon),  the  Columbia,  the  Red  Cross,  and  so  on.  Some- 
times during  the  night  while  we  were  fishing  into  the 
west,  a  hundred  sail  or  more  of  vessels,  we  would  pass 
through  another  big  fleet  coming  the  other  way,  and 
some  of  our  long  trawls  and  warps  would  tangle  with 
theirs.  Beyond  the  beautiful  spectacle  of  the  myriads  of 
lights  bobbing  up  and  down  often  enough  on  mighty 
rough  seas  —  for  it  needed  good  breezes  to  haul  our 
trawls  —  would  be  the  rockets  and  flares  of  the  en- 
tangled boats,  and  often  enough  also  rockets  and  flares 
from  friends,  and  from  cutters.  One  soon  became  so 
friendly  with  the  men  that  one  would  not  return  at  night 
to  the  ship,  but  visit  around  and  rejoin  the  Mission  ship 
boarding  fish  next  day,  to  see  patients  coming  for  aid. 
Though  it  was  strictly  against  sea  rules  for  skippers  to 
be  off  their  vessels  all  night,  that  was  a  rule,  like  all 
others  on  the  North  Sea,  as  often  marked  in  the  breach 
as  in  the  observance.  A  goodly  company  would  get  to- 


94  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

gether  yarning  and  often  singing  and  playing  games  until 
it  was  time  to  haul  the  trawl  and  light  enough  to  find 
their  own  vessel  and  signal  for  the  boat. 

The  relation  of  my  new  friends  to  religion  was  a  very 
characteristic  one.  Whatever  they  did,  they  did  hard. 
Thus  one  of  the  admirals,  being  a  thirsty  soul,  and  the 
grog  vessels  having  been  adrift  for  a  longer  while  than 
he  fancied,  conceived  the  fine  idea  of  holding  up  the 
Heligoland  saloons.  So  one  bright  morning  he  "hove  his 
fleet  to"  under  the  lee  of  the  island  and  a  number  of 
boats  went  ashore,  presumably  to  sell  fish.  Altogether 
they  landed  some  five  hundred  men,  who  held  up  the  few 
saloons  for  two  or  three  days.  As  a  result  subsequently 
only  one  crew  selling  fish  to  the  island  was  allowed 
ashore  at  one  time.  The  very  gamble  of  their  occupation 
made  them  do  things  hard.  Thus  it  was  a  dangerous  task 
to  throw  out  a  small  boat  in  half  a  gale  of  wind,  fill  her 
up  with  heavy  boxes  of  fish,  and  send  her  to  put  these 
over  the  rail  of  a  steamer  wallowing  in  the  trough  of  a 
mountainous  sea. 

But  it  was  on  these  very  days  when  less  fish  was  sent 
to  market  that  the  best  prices  were  realized,  and  so  there 
were  always  a  number  of  dare-devils,  who  did  not  care  if 
lives  were  lost  so  long  as  good  prices  were  obtained  and 
their  record  stood  high  on  the  weekly  list  of  sales  which 
was  forwarded  to  both  owners  and  men.  I  have  known 
as  many  as  fourteen  men  upset  in  one  morning  out  of 
these  boats;  and  the  annual  loss  of  some  three  hundred 
and  fifty  men  was  mostly  from  this  cause.  Conditions 
were  subsequently  improved  by  the  Board  of  Trade,  who 
made  it  manslaughter  against  the  skipper  if  any  man 
was  drowned  boarding  fish,  unless  the  admiral  had  shown 
his  flags  to  give  the  fleet  permission  to  do  so.  In  those 
days,  however,  I  often  saw  twenty  to  thirty  boats  all 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  95 

tied  up  alongside  the  cutter  at  one  time,  the  heavy  seas 
every  now  and  again  rolling  the  cutter's  sail  right  under 
water,  and  when  she  righted  again  it  might  come  up 
under  the  keels  of  some  of  the  boats  and  tip  them  upside 
down.  Thus  any  one  in  them  was  caught  like  a  mouse 
under  a  trap  or  knocked  to  pieces  trying  to  swim  among 
the  rushing,  tossing  boats. 

As  a  rule  we  hauled  at  midnight,  and  it  was  always  a 
fresh  source  of  wonder,  for  the  trawl  was  catholic  in  its 
embrace  and  brought  up  anything  that  came  in  its  way. 
To  emphasize  how  comparatively  recently  the  Channel 
had  been  dry  land,  many  teeth  and  tusks  of  mammoths 
who  used  to  roam  its  now  buried  forests  were  given  up 
to  the  trawls  by  the  ever-shifting  sands.  Old  wreckage  of 
every  description,  ancient  crockery,  and  even  a  water- 
logged, old  square-rigger  that  must  have  sunk  years 
before  were  brought  one  day  as  far  as  the  surface  by  the 
stout  wire  warp.  After  the  loss  of  a  large  steamer  called 
the  Elbe  many  of  the  passengers  who  had  been  drowned 
were^auled  up  in  this  way;  and  on  one  occasion  great 
excitement  was  caused  in  Hull  by  a  fisher  lad  from  that 
port  being  picked  up  with  his  hands  tied  behind  his  back 
and  a  heavy  weight  on  his  feet.  The  defence  was  that 
the  boy  had  died,  and  was  thus  buried  to  save  breaking 
the  voyage  —  supported  by  the  fact  that  another  vessel 
had  also  picked  up  the  boy  and  thrown  him  overboard 
again  for  the  same  reason.  But  those  who  were  a  bit 
superstitious  thought  otherwise,  and  more  especially  as 
cruelty  to  these  boys  was  not  unknown. 

These  lads  were  apprenticed  to  the  fishery  masters 
largely  from  industrial  or  reformatory  schools,  had  no 
relations  to  look  after  them,  and  often  no  doubt  gave  the 
limit  of  trouble  and  irritation.  On  the  whole,  however, 
the  system  worked  well,  and  a  most  excellent  class  of 


96  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

capable  seamen  was  developed.  At  times,  however,  they 
were  badly  exploited.  During  their  apprenticeship  years 
they  were  not  entitled  to  pay,  only  to  pocket  money,  and 
yet  sometimes  the  whole  crew  including  the  skipper  were 
apprentices  and  under  twenty-one  years  of  age.  Even 
after  that  they  were  fitted  for  no  other  calling  but  to 
follow  the  sea,  and  had  to  accept  the  master's  terms. 
There  were  no  fishermen's  unions,  and  the  men  being 
very  largely  illiterate  were  often  left  victims  of  a  peonage 
system  in  spite  of  the  Truck  Acts.  The  master  of  a  vessel 
has  to  keep  discipline,  especially  in  a  fleet,  and  the  best 
of  boys  have  faults  and  need  punishing  while  on  land. 
These  skippers  themselves  were  brought  up  in  a  rough 
school,  and  those  who  fell  vicitms  to  drink  and  made  the 
acquaintance  of  the  remedial  measures  of  our  penal  sys- 
tem of  that  day  were  only  further  brutalized  by  it.  Re- 
ligion scarcely  touched  the  majority;  for  their  brief 
periods  of  leave  ashore  were  not  unnaturally  spent  in 
having  a  good  time.  To  those  poisoned  by  the  villainous 
beverages  sold  on  the  sordid  grog  vessels  no  excess  was 
too  great.  Owners  were  in  sympathy  with  the  Mission  in 
trying  to  oust  the  coper,  because  their  property,  in  the 
form  of  fish,  nets,  stores,  and  even  sails,  were  sometimes 
bartered  on  the  high  seas  for  liquor.  On  one  occasion  dur- 
ing a  drunken  quarrel  in  the  coper's  cabin  one  skipper 
threw  the  kerosene  lamp  over  another  lying  intoxicated 
on  the  floor.  His  heavy  wool  jersey  soaked  in  kerosene 
caught  fire.  He  rushed  for  the  deck,  and  then,  a  dancing 
mass  of  flames,  leaped  overboard  and  disappeared. 

Occasionally  skippers  devised  punishments  with  a  view 
to  remedying  the  defects  of  character.  Thus  one  lad, 
who  through  carelessness  had  on  more  than  one  oc- 
casion cooked  the  "duff"  for  dinner  badly,  was  made  to 
take  his  cinders  on  deck  when  it  was  his  time  to  turn 


AT  THE  LONDON  HOSPITAL  97 

in,  and  go  forward  to  the  fore-rigging.  Then  he  had  to 
take  one  cinder,  go  up  to  the  cross-tree,  and  throw  it  over 
into  the  sea,  come  down  the  opposite  rigging  and  repeat 
the  act  until  he  had  emptied  his  scuttle.  Another  who  had 
failed  to  clean  the  cabin  properly  had  one  night,  instead 
of  going  to  bed,  to  take  a  bucketful  of  sea  water  and 
empty  it  with  a  teaspoon  into  another,  and  so  to  and  fro 
until  morning.  On  one  occasion  a  poor  boy  was  put  under 
the  ballast  deck,  that  is,  the  cabin  floor,  and  forgotten. 
He  was  subsequently  found  dead,  drowned  in  the  bilge 
water.  It  was  easy  to  hide  the  results  of  cruelty,  for 
being  washed  overboard  was  by  no  means  an  uncommon 
way  of  disappearing  from  vessels  with  low  freeboards  in 
the  shallow  water  of  the  North  Sea. 

A  very  practical  outcome  in  the  mission  work  was  the 
organization  of  the  Fisher  Lads'  Letter- Writing  Associa- 
tion. The  members  accepted  so  many  names  of  orphan 
lads  at  sea  and  pledged  themselves  to  write  regularly  to 
them.  Also,  if  possible,  they  were  to  look  them  up  when 
they  returned  to  land,  and  indeed  do  for  them  much  as 
the  War  Camp  Community  League  members  are  to-day 
trying  to  accomplish  for  our  soldiers  and  sailors.  As 
every  practical  exposition  of  love  must,  it  met  with  a 
very  real  response,  and  brought,  moreover,  new  interests 
and  joys  into  many  selfish  lives. 

I  remember  one  lady  whose  whole  care  in  life  had  been 
her  own  health.  She  had  nursed  it,  and  worried  over  it, 
and  enjoyed  ill  health  so  long,  that  only  the  constant  re- 
course to  the  most  refined  stimulants  postponed  the  end 
which  would  have  been  a  merciful  relief  —  to  others.  The 
effort  of  letter-writing  remade  her.  Doctors  were  forgot- 
ten, stimulants  were  tabooed,  the  insignia  of  invalidism 
banished,  and  to  my  intense  surprise  I  ran  across  her  at  a 
fishing  port  surrounded  by  a  bevy  of  blue-jerseyed  lads. 


98  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

who  were  some  of  those  whom  she  was  being  blessed  by 
helping. 

The  best  of  efforts,  however,  sometimes  "gang  aft 
agley."  One  day  I  received  a  letter,  evidently  written  in 
great  consternation,  from  an  elderly  spinster  of  singu- 
larly aristocratic  connections  and  an  irreproachableness 
of  life  which  was  almost  painful.  The  name  sent  to  her 
by  one  of  our  skippers  as  a  correspondent  who  needed 
help  and  encouragement  was  one  of  those  which  would 
be  characterized  as  common  —  let  us  say  John  Jones. 
By  some  perverse  fate  the  wrong  ship  was  given  as  an 
address,  and  the  skipper  of  it  happened  to  have  exactly 
the  same  name.  It  appeared  that  lack  of  experience  in 
just  such  work  had  made  her  letter  possibly  more  affec- 
tionate than  she  would  have  wished  for  under  the  cir- 
cumstances which  developed.  For  in  writing  to  me  she 
enclosed  a  ferocious  letter  from  a  lady  of  Billingsgate 
threatening,  not  death,  but  mutilation,  if  she  continued 
making  overtures  to  "her  John.'* 


CHAPTER  V 

NORTH  SEA  WORK 

I  HAVE  dwelt  at  length  upon  the  experiences  of  the  North 
Sea,  because  trivial  as  they  appear  on  the  surface,  they 
concern  the  biggest  problem  of  human  life  —  the  belief 
that  man  is  not  of  the  earth,  but  only  a  temporary  so- 
journer upon  it.  This  belief,  that  he  is  destined  to  go  on 
living  elsewhere,  makes  a  vast  difference  to  one's  esti- 
mate of  values.  Life  becomes  a  school  instead  of  a  mere 
stage,  the  object  of  which  is  that  our  capacities  for  useful- 
ness should  develop  through  using  them  until  we  reach 
graduation.  What  life  gives  to  us  can  only  be  of  permanent 
importance  as  it  develops  our  souls,  thus  enabling  us  to 
give  more  back  to  it,  and  leaves  us  better  prepared  for 
any  opportunities  than  may  lie  beyond  this  world.  The 
most  valuable  asset  for  this  assumption  is  love  for  the 
people  among  whom  one  lives. 

The  best  teachers  in  life  are  far  from  being  those  who 
know  most,  or  who  think  themselves  wisest.  Show  me  a 
schoolmaster  who  does  not  love  his  boys  and  you  show 
me  one  who  is  of  no  use.  Our  faith  in  our  sonship  of  God 
is  immensely  strengthened  by  the  puzzling  fact  that 
even  God  cannot  force  goodness  into  us,  His  sons,  be- 
cause we  share  His  nature. 

These  convictions,  anyhow,  were  the  mental  assets 
with  which  I  had  to  begin  work,  and  no  others.  A  scien- 
tific training  had  impressed  upon  me  that  big  and  little 
are  very  relative  terms;  that  one  piece  of  work  becomes 
unexpectedly  permanent  and  big,  while  that  which  ap- 
pears to  be  great,  but  is  merely  diffuse,  will  be  temporary 
and  ineffective.  Experience  has  taught  me  that  one 


100  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

I  j  human  life  has  its  limits  of  direct  impetus,  but  that  its 
jimost  lasting  value  is  its  indirect  influence.  The  greatest 
Life  ever  lived  was  no  smaller  for  being  in  a  carpenter's 
shop,  and  largely  spent  among  a  few  ignorant  fishermen. 
The  Scarabee  had  a  valid  apologia  pro  vita  sua  in  spite 
of  Dr.  Holmes.  Tolstoy  on  his  farm,  Milton  without  his 
sight,  Bunyan  in  his  prison,  Pasteur  in  his  laboratory, 
all  did  great  things  for  the  world. 

There  is  so  much  that  is  manly  about  the  lives  of  those 
who  follow  the  sea,  so  much  less  artificiality  than  in 
many  other  callings,  and  with  our  fishermen  so  many 
fewer  of  what  we  call  loosely  "chances  in  life,"  that  to 
sympathize  with  them  was  easy  —  and  sympathy  is  a 
long  step  toward  love.  Life  at  sea  also  gives  time  and 
opportunity  for  really  knowing  a  man.  It  breaks  down 
conventional  barriers,  and  indeed  almost  compels  fellow- 
ship and  thus  an  intelligent  understanding  of  the  diffi- 
culties and  tragedies  of  the  soul  of  our  neighbour.  That 
rare  faculty  of  imagination  which  is  the  inspiration  of  all 
great  lovers  of  men  is  not  alone  indispensable.  Hand  in 
hand  with  this  inevitably  goes  the  vision  of  one's  own 
opportunity  to  help  and  not  to  hinder  others,  even 
though  it  be  through  the  unattractive  medium  of  the 
collection  box  —  for  that  gives  satisfaction  only  in  pro- 
portion to  the  sacrifice  which  we  make. 

In  plain  words  the  field  of  work  offered  me  was  at- 
tractive. It  seemed  to  promise  me  the  most  remunerative 
returns  for  my  abilities,  or,  to  put  it  in  another  way,  it 
aroused  my  ambitions  suflSciently  to  make  me  believe 
that  my  special  capacities  and  training  could  be  used  to 
make  new  men  as  well  as  new  bodies.  Any  idea  of  sacri- 
fice was  balanced  by  the  fact  that  I  never  cared  very 
much  for  the  frills  of  life  so  long  as  the  necessities  were 
forthcoming. 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  101 

The  attention  that  Harold  Begbie's  book  "Twice-  ^ 
Born  Men"  received,  was  to  me  later  in  life  a  source  of 
surprise.  One  forgets  that  the  various  religions  and  sects 
which  aimed  at  the  healing  of  men's  souls  have  concerned 
themselves  more  with  intellectual  creeds  than  material, 
Christ-like  ends.  At  first  it  was  not  so.  Paul  rejoiced 
that  he  was  a  new  man.  There  can  be  no  question  but 
that  the  Gospels  show  us  truly  that  the  change  in  Christ's 
first  followers  was  from  men,  the  slaves  of  every  ordinary 
human  passion,  into  men  who  were  self -mastered  —  that 
Christ  taught  by  what  he  was  and  did  rather  than  by 
insistence  on  creeds  and  words.  It  has  been  seeing  these 
changes  in  men's  lives,  not  only  in  their  surroundings, 
though  those  improve  immediately,  that  reconcile  one 
to  our  environment,  and  has  induced  me  to  live  a  life- 
time in  the  wilds. 

Another  movement  that  was  just  starting  at  this  time 
also  interested  me  considerably.  A  number  of  keen  young 
men  from  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  having  experienced 
the  dangers  that  beset  boys  from  big  English  public 
schools  who  enter  the  universities  without  any  definite 
help  as  to  their  attitude  toward  the  spiritual  relation- 
ships of  life,  got  together  to  discuss  the  question.  They 
recognized  that  the  formation  of  the  Boys'  Brigade  in 
our  conservative  social  life  only  touched  the  youth  of 
the  poorer  classes.  Like  our  English  Y.M.C.A.,  it  was  not 
then  aristocratic  enough  for  gentlemen.  They  saw,  how- 
ever, that  athletic  attainments  carried  great  weight,  and 
that  all  outdoor  accomplishments  had  a  strong  attrac- 
tion for  boys  from  every  class.  Thus  it  happened  that  an 
organization  called  the  Public  School  Camps  came  into 
being.  Its  ideal  was  the  uplift  of  character,  and  the  move- 
ment has  grown  with  immense  strides  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic. 


102  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

An  integral  part  of  my  summer  holidays  during  these 
years  was  spent  as  medical  oflBcer  at  one  of  these  camps. 
For  many  reasons  it  was  wise  in  England  to  run  them  on 
military  lines,  for  besides  the  added  dignity,  it  insured 
the  ability  to  maintain  order  and  discipline.  Some  well- 
known  commandant  was  chosen  who  was  a  soldier  also 
in  the  good  fight  of  faith.  Special  sites  were  selected, 
generally  on  the  grounds  of  some  big  country  seat  which 
were  loaned  by  the  interested  lord  of  the  manor,  and 
every  kind  of  outdoor  attraction  was  provided  which 
could  be  secured.  Besides  organized  competitive  games, 
there  was  usually  a  yacht,  good  bathing,  always  a  gym- 
khana, and  numerous  expeditions  and  *' hikes."  Not  a 
moment  was  left  unoccupied.  All  of  the  work  of  the  camp 
was  done  by  the  boys,  who  served  in  turn  on  orderly 
duty.  The  officers  were  always,  if  possible,  prominent 
athletes,  to  whom  the  boys  could  look  up  as  being  capable 
in  physical  as  well  as  spiritual  fields.  There  was  a  brief 
address  each  night  before  "taps"  in  the  big  marquee 
used  for  mess;  and  one  night  was  always  a  straight  talk 
on  the  problems  of  sex  by  the  medical  officers,  whom 
the  boys  were  advised  to  consult  in  their  perplexities. 
These  camps  were  among  the  happiest  memories  of  my 
life,  and  many  of  the  men  to-day  gratefully  acknowledge 
that  the  camps  were  the  turning-point  of  their  whole 
lives.  The  secret  was  unconventionality  and  absolute 
naturalness  with  no  "shibboleths."  The  boys  were  al- 
lowed to  be  boys  absolutely  in  an  atmosphere  of  sincere 
if  not  omniscient  fervour.  On  one  occasion  when  breaking 
up  camp,  a  curly-headed  young  rascal  in  my  tent,  being 
late  on  the  last  morning  —  unknown  to  any  one  —  went 
to  the  train  in  his  pajamas,  hidden  only  by  his  raincoat. 
At  a  small  wayside  station  over  a  hundred  miles  from 
London,  whither  he  was  bound,  leaving  his  coat  in  the 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  103 

carriage,  he  ventured  into  the  refreshment  stall  of  the 
waiting-room.  Unfortunately,  however,  he  came  out 
only  to  find  his  train  departed  and  himself  in  his  night- 
clothes  on  the  platform  without  a  penny,  a  ticket,  or  a 
friend.  Eluding  the  authorities  he  reached  the  huge 
Liverpool  terminus  by  night  to  find  a  faithful  friend 
waiting  on  the  platform  for  him  with  the  sorely  needed 
overgarment. 

No  one  was  ever  ashamed  to  be  a  Christian,  or  of  what 
Christ  was,  or  what  he  did  and  stood  for.  However,  to 
ignore  the  fact  that  the  mere  word  "missionary" 
aroused  suspicion  in  the  average  English  unconventional 
mind  —  such  as  those  of  these  clean,  natural-minded 
boys  —  would  be  a  great  mistake.  Unquestionably,  as 
in  the  case  of  Dickens^  a  missionary  was  unpractical  if  ^ 
not  hypocritical,  and  mildly  incompetent  if  not  secretly 
vicious.  I  found  myself  always  fighting  against  the  idea 
that  I  was  termed  a  missionary.  The  men  I  loved  and 
admired,  especially  such  men  as  those  on  our  athletic 
teams,  felt  really  strongly  about  it.  Henry  Martyn  — 
as  a  scholar  —  was  a  hero  to  those  who  read  of  him, 
though  few  did.  Moreover,  who  does  not  love  Charles 
Kingsley?  Even  as  boys,  we  want  to  be  "a  man,'*  though 
Kingsley  was  a  "Parson  Lot."  It  always  seemed  that  a 
missionary  was  naturally  discounted  until  he  had  proved 
his  right  to  be  received  as  an  ordinary  being.  Once  after 
being  the  guest  of  a  bank  president,  he  told  me  that  my 
stay  was  followed  by  that  of  their  bishop,  who  was  a 
person  of  great  importance.  WTien  the  bishop  had  gone, 
he  asked  his  two  boys  one  day.  "Well,  which  do  you 
like  best,  the  bishop  or  the  doctor .f*"  "Ach,"  was  the 
reply,  "the  bishop  can't  stand  on  his  head."  On  another 
occasion  during  a  visit  —  while  lecturing  on  behalf  of 
the  fishermen  —  and  doing  my  usual  evening  physical 


104  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

drill  in  my  bedroom,  by  a  great  mischance  I  missed  a 
straight-arm-balance  on  a  chair,  fell  over,  and  nearly 
brought  the  chandelier  of  the  drawing-room  down  on  the 
heads  of  some  guests.  That  a  so-called  "missionary" 
should  be  so  worldly  as  to  wish  to  keep  his  body  fit 
seemed  so  unusual  that  I  heard  of  that  trifle  a  hundred 
times. 

The  Church  of  Christ  that  is  coming  will  be  interested 
in  the  forces  that  make  for  peace  and  righteousness  in 
this  world  rather  than  in  academic  theories  as  to  how  to 
get  rewards  in  another.  That  will  be  a  real  stimulus  to 
fitness  and  capacity  all  round  instead  of  a  dope  for 
failures.  It  is  that  element  in  missions  to-day,  such  as  the 
up-to-date  work  of  the  Rockefeller  Institute  and  other 
medical  missions  in  China  and  India,  which  alone  holds 
the  respect  of  the  mass  of  the  people.  The  value  of  going 
out  merely  to  make  men  of  different  races  think  as  we 
think  is  being  proportionately  discounted  with  the  in- 
crease of  education. 

Our  North  Sea  work  grew  apace.  Vessel  after  vessel 
was  added  to  the  fleet.  Her  Majesty,  Queen  Victoria, 
became  interested,  and  besides  subscribing  personally 
toward  the  first  hospital  boat,  permitted  it  to  be  named 
in  her  honour.  According  to  custom  the  builders  had  a 
beautiful  Httle  model  made  which  Her  Majesty  agreed 
to  accept.  It  was  decided  that  it  should  be  presented  to 
her  in  Buckingham  Palace  by  the  two  senior  mission 
captains. 

The  journey  to  them  was  a  far  more  serious  under- 
taking than  a  winter  voyage  on  the  Dogger  Bank.  How- 
ever, arrayed  in  smart  blue  suits  and  new  guernseys  and 
polished  to  the  last  degree,  they  set  out  on  the  eventful 
expedition.  On  their  return  every  one  was  as  anxious  to 
know  "how  the  voyage  had  turned  out"  as  if  they  had 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  105 

been  exploring  new  fishing  grounds  around  the  North 
Cape  in  the  White  Sea.  "Nothing  to  complain  of,  boys, 
till  just  as  we  had  her  in  the  wind's  eye  to  shoot  the  gear," 
said  the  senior  skipper.  "A  big  swell  in  knee-breeches 
opened  the  door  and  called  out  our  names,  when  I  was 
brought  up  all  standing,  for  I  saw  that  the  peak  halliard 
was  fast  on  the  port  side.  The  blame  thing  was  too  small 
for  me  to  shift  over,  so  I  had  to  leave  it.  But,  believe  me, 
she  never  said  a  word  about  it.  That's  what  I  call  some- 
thing of  a  lady." 

At  this  time  we  had  begun  two  new  ventures,  an  in- 
stitute at  Yarmouth  for  fishermen  ashore  and  a  dis- 
pensary vessel  to  be  sent  out  each  spring  among  the 
thousands  of  Scotch,  Manx,  Irish,  and  French  fishermen, 
who  carried  on  the  herring  and  mackerel  fishery  off  the 
south  and  west  coast  of  Ireland. 

The  south  Irish  spring  fishery  is  wonderfully  interest- 
ing. Herring  and  mackerel  are  in  huge  shoals  anywhere 
from  five  to  forty  miles  off  the  land,  and  the  vessels  run 
in  and  out  each  day  bringing  back  the  catch  of  the  night. 
Each  vessel  shoots  out  about  two  miles  of  net,  while 
some  French  ones  will  shoot  out  five  miles.  Thus  the 
aggregate  of  nets  used  would  with  ease  stretch  from 
Ireland  to  New  York  and  back.  Yet  the  undaunted 
herring  return  year  after  year  to  the  disastrous  rendez- 
vous. The  vessels  come  from  all  parts.  Many  are  the 
large  tan-sailed  luggers  from  the  Scottish  coasts,  their 
sails  and  hulls  marked  "B.F."  for  Banff,  "M.E."  for 
Montrose,  "C.N."  for  Campbelltown,  etc.  With  these 
come  the  plucky  little  Ulster  boats  from  Belfast  and 
Larne,  Loch  Swilling  and  Loch  Foyle;  and  not  a  few  of 
the  hereditary  seafaring  men  from  Cornwall,  Devon, 
and  Dorset.  Others  also  come  from  Falmouth,  Penzance, 
and  Exmouth.    Besides  these  are  the  Irish  boats  —  few 


106  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

enough,  alas,  for  Paddy  is  not  a  sailor.  A  good  priest 
had  tried  to  induce  his  people  to  share  this  rich  harvest 
by  starting  a  fishery  school  for  boys  at  Baltimore,  where 
net-making  and  every  other  branch  of  the  industry  was 
taught.  It  was  to  little  purpose,  for  I  have  met  men 
hungry  on  the  west  coast,  who  were  trying  to  live  on 
potato-raising  on  that  bog  land  who  were  graduates  of 
Father  D.'s  school. 

There  was  one  year  when  we  ourselves  were  trying  out 
the  trawling  in  Clew  Bay  and  Blackwood,  and  getting 
marvellous  catches;  so  much  so  that  I  remember  one 
small  trawler  from  Grimsby  on  the  east  coast  of  England 
making  two  thousand  dollars  in  two  days'  work,  while 
the  Countess  of  Z.  fund  was  distributing  charity  to  the 
poverty-stricken  men  who  lived  around  the  bay  itself. 
The  Government  of  Ireland  also  made  serious  efforts  to 
make  its  people  take  up  the  fishery  business.  About  one 
million  dollars  obtained  out  of  the  escheated  funds  of 
the  Church  of  England  in  Ireland,  when  that  organiza- 
tion was  disestablished  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  was  used  as  a 
loan  fund  which  was  available  for  fishermen,  resident  six 
months,  at  two  per  cent  interest.  They  were  permitted 
to  purchase  their  own  boat  and  gear  for  the  fishery  out 
of  the  money  thus  provided. 

While  we  lay  in  Durham  Harbour  at  the  entrance  to 
Waterford  Harbour,  we  met  many  Cornishmen  who  were 
temporarily  resident  there,  having  come  over  from  Corn- 
wall to  qualify  for  borrowing  the  money  to  get  boats  and 
outfit.  During  one  week  in  which  we  were  working  from 
that  port,  there  were  so  many  saints'  days  on  which  the 
Irish  crews  would  not  go  out  fishing,  but  were  having 
good  times  on  the  land,  that  the  skippers,  who  were 
Cornishmen,  had  to  form  a  crew  out  of  their  own  num- 
bers and  take  one  of  their  boats  to  sea. 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  107 

One  day  we  had  landed  on  the  Arran  Islands,  and  I 
was  hunting  ferns  in  the  rock  crevices,  for  owing  to  the 
warmth  of  the  Gulf  current  the  growth  is  luxuriant.  On 
the  top  of  the  cliffs  about  three  hundred  feet  high,  I  fell 
in  with  two  Irishmen  smoking  their  pipes  and  sprawling 
on  the  edge  of  the  precipice.  The  water  below  was  very 
deep  and  they  were  fishing.  I  had  the  fun  of  seeing  dan- 
gling codfish  hauled  leisurely  up  all  that  long  distance,  and 
if  one  fell  off  on  the  passage,  it  was  amusing  to  note  the 
absolute  insouciance  of  the  fishermen,  who  assured  me 
that  there  were  plenty  more  in  the  sea. 

It  has  always  been  a  puzzle  to  me  why  so  few  tourists 
and  yachtsmen  visit  the  south  and  west  coast  of  Ireland. 
Its  marvellous  wild,  rock  scenery,  its  exquisite  bays,  — 
no  other  words  describe  them,  —  its  emerald  verdure, 
and  its  interesting  and  hospitable  people  have  given 
me,  during  the  spring  fishing  seasons  that  I  spent  on  that 
coast,  some  of  the  happiest  memories  of  my  life.  On  the 
contrary,  most  of  the  yachts  hang  around  the  Solent, 
and  the  piers  of  Ryde,  Cowes,  and  Southampton,  instead 
of  the  magnificent  coast  from  Queenstown  to  Donegal 
Cliffs,  and  from  there  all  along  West  Scotland  to  the 
Hebrides. 

About  this  time  our  work  established  a  dispensary  and 
social  centre  at  Crookhaven,  just  inside  the  Fastnet 
Lighthouse,  and  another  in  Tralee  on  the  Kerry  coast, 
north  of  Cape  Clear.  Gatherings  for  worship  and  singing 
were  also  held  on  Sundays  on  the  boats,  for  on  that  day 
neither  Scotch,  Manx,  nor  English  went  fishing.  The 
men  loved  the  music,  the  singing  of  hymns,  and  the  con- 
versational addresses.  Many  would  take  some  part  in  the 
service,  and  my  memories  of  those  gatherings  are  still 
very  pleasant  ones. 

On  this  wild  coast  calls  for  help  frequently  came  from 


108  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

the  poor  settlers  as  well  as  from  the  seafarers.  A  summons 
coming  in  one  day  from  the  Fastnet  Light,  we  rowed 
out  in  a  small  boat  to  that  lovely  rock  in  the  Atlantic. 
A  heavy  sea,  however,  making  landing  impossible,  we 
caught  hold  of  a  buoy,  anchored  off  from  the  rock,  and 
then  rowing  in  almost  to  the  surf,  caught  a  line  from  the 
high  overhanging  crane.  A  few  moments  later  one  was 
picked  out  of  the  tumbling,  tossing  boat  like  a  winkle 
out  of  a  shell,  by  a  noose  at  the  end  of  a  line  from  a  crane 
a  hundred  and  fifty  feet  above,  swung  perpendicularly 
up  into  the  air,  and  then  round  and  into  a  trap-door  in 
the  side  of  the  lighthouse.  On  leaving  one  was  swung  out 
again  in  the  same  fashion,  and  dangled  over  the  tum- 
bling boat  until  caught  and  pulled  in  by  the  oarsmen. 

Another  day  we  rowed  out  nine  miles  in  an  Irish  craft 
to  visit  the  Skerry  Islands,  famous  for  the  old  Beehive 
Monastery,  and  the  countless  nests  of  gannets  and  other 
large  sea-birds.  The  cliffs  rise  to  a  great  height  almost 
precipitously,  and  the  ceaseless  thunder  of  the  Atlantic 
swell  jealously  guards  any  landing.  There  being  no  davit 
or  crane,  we  had  just  to  fling  ourselves  into  the  sea,  and 
climb  up  as  best  we  could,  carrying  a  line  to  haul  up  our 
clothing  from  the  boat  and  other  apparatus  after  landing, 
while  the  oarsmen  kept  her  outside  the  surf.  To  hold  on 
to  the  slippery  rock  we  needed  but  little  clothing,  any- 
how, for  it  was  a  slow  matter,  and  the  clinging  power  of 
one's  bare  toes  was  essential.  The  innumerable  gannets 
sitting  on  their  nests  gave  the  island  the  appearance  of 
a  snowdrift;  and  we  soon  had  all  the  eggs  that  we  needed 
lowered  by  a  line.  But  some  of  the  gulls,  of  whose  eggs 
we  wanted  specimens  also,  built  so  cleverly  onto  the 
actual  faces  of  the  cliffs,  that  we  had  to  adopt  the  old 
plan  of  hanging  over  the  edge  and  raising  the  eggs  on  the 
back  of  one's  foot,  which  is  an  exploit  not  devoid  of 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  109 

excitement.  The  chief  diflSculty  was,  however,  with  one 
of  our  number,  who  literally  stuck  on  the  top,  being 
unable  to  descend,  at  least  in  a  way  compatible  with 
comfort  or  safety.  The  upshot  was  that  he  had  to  be 
blindfolded  and  helped. 

One  of  our  Council,  being  connected  at  this  time  with 
the  Irish  Poor-Relief  Board  and  greatly  interested  in 
the  Government  efforts  to  relieve  distress  in  Ireland, 
arranged  that  we  should  make  a  voyage  around  the 
entire  island  in  one  of  our  vessels,  trying  the  trawling 
grounds  everywhere,  and  also  the  local  markets  available 
for  making  our  catch  remunerative.  There  has  been  con- 
siderable activity  in  these  waters  of  late  years,  but  it 
was  practically  pioneer  work  in  those  days,  the  fishery 
being  almost  entirely  composed  of  drift  nets  and  long 
lines.  It  was  supposed  that  the  water  was  too  deep  and 
the  bottom  too  uneven  and  rocky  to  make  trawling 
possible.  We  had  only  a  sailing  vessel  of  about  sixty  tons, 
and  the  old  heavy  beam  trawl,  for  the  other  trawl  and 
steam  fishing  boats  were  then  quite  in  their  infancy.  The 
quantity  and  variety  of  victims  that  came  to  our  net 
were  prodigious,  and  the  cruise  has  remained  as  a  dream 
in  my  memory,  combined  as  it  was  with  so  many  chances 
of  helping  out  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  amiable  — 
if  not  educated  —  peoples  in  the  world.  It  happened  to 
be  a  year  of  potato  scarcity;  as  one  friend  pointed  out, 
there  was  a  surplus  of  Murphys  in  the  kitchen  and  a 
scarcity  of  Murphys  in  the  cellar  —  "Murphys"  being 
another  name  for  that  vegetable  which  is  so  large  a  factor 
in  Irish  economic  life.  As  mentioned  before,  a  fund,  called 
the  Countess  of  Z.'s  fund,  had  been  established  to  relieve 
the  consequent  distress,  and  while  we  were  fishing  in 
Black  Sod  Bay,  the  natives  around  the  shore  were  accept- 
ing all  that  they  could  secure.  Yet  one  steam  trawler 


110  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

cleared  four  hundred  pounds  within  a  week;  and  our  own 
fine  catches,  taken  in  so  short  a  while,  made  it  seem  a 
veritable  fishermen's  paradise  for  us,  who  were  accus- 
tomed to  toil  over  the  long-combed-out  and  stormy  banks 
of  the  North  Sea.  The  variety  of  fish  taken  alone  made 
the  voyage  of  absorbing  interest,  numbering  cod,  had- 
dock, ling,  hake,  turbot,  soles,  plaice,  halibut,  whiting, 
crayfish,  shark,  dog-fish,  and  many  quaint  monsters 
unmarketable  then,  but  perfectly  edible.  Among  those 
taken  in  was  the  big  angler  fish,  which  lives  at  the 
bottom  with  his  enormous  mouth  open,  dangling  an 
attractive-looking  bait  formed  by  a  long  rod  growing 
out  from  his  nose,  which  lures  small  victims  into  the 
cavern,  whence,  as  he  possesses  row  upon  row  of  spiky 
teeth  which  providentially  point  down  his  throat,  there 
is  seldom  any  returning. 

Among  the  many  memories  of  that  coast  which  gave 
me  a  vision  of  the  land  question  as  it  affected  the  people 
in  those  days,  one  in  particular  has  always  remained 
with  me.  We  had  made  a  big  catch  in  a  certain  bay,  a 
perfectly  beautiful  inlet.  To  see  if  the  local  fishermen 
could  find  a  market  within  reach  of  these  fishing  grounds, 
with  one  of  the  crew,  and  the  fish  packed  in  boxes,  we 
sailed  up  the  inlet  to  the  market  town  of  Bell  Mullet. 
Being  Saturday,  we  found  a  market  day  in  progress,  and 
buyers,  who,  encouraged  by  one  of  the  new  Government 
light  railways,  were  able  to  purchase  our  fish.  That  eve- 
ning, however,  when  halfway  home,  a  squall  suddenly 
struck  our  own  lightened  boat,  which  was  rigged  with 
one  large  lugsail,  and  capsized  her.  By  swimming  and 
manoeuvring  the  boat,  we  made  land  on  the  low,  muddy 
flats.  No  house  was  in  sight,  and  it  was  not  until  long 
after  dark  that  we  two  shivering  masses  of  mud  reached 
an  isolated  cabin  in  the  middle  of  a  patch  of  the  re- 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  Hi 

deemed  ground  right  in  the  centre  of  a  large  bog.  A 
miserably  clad  woman  greeted  us  with  a  warm  Irish 
welcome.  The  house  had  only  one  room  and  accommo- 
dated the  live-stock  as  well  as  the  family.  A  fine  cow 
stood  in  one  corner;  a  donkey  tied  to  the  foot  of  the  bed 
was  patiently  looking  down  into  the  face  of  the  baby. 
Father  was  in  England  harvesting.  A  couple  of  pigs  lay 
under  the  bed,  and  the  floor  space  was  still  further  en- 
croached upon  by  a  goodly  number  of  chickens,  which 
were  encouraged  by  the  warmth  of  the  peat  fire.  They 
not  only  thought  it  their  duty  to  emphasize  our  welcome, 
but  —  misled  by  the  firelight  —  were  saluting  the  still 
far-off  dawn.  The  resultant  emotions  which  we  experi- 
enced during  the  night  led  us  to  suggest  that  we  might 
assist  toward  the  erection  of  a  cattle  pen.  Before  leaving, 
however,  we  were  told,  "Shure  t'  rint  would  be  raised  in 
the  fall,"  if  such  signs  of  prosperity  as  farm  buildings 
greeted  the  land  agent's  arrival. 

The  mouth  of  Loch  Foyle,  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
bays  in  Ireland,  gave  us  a  fine  return  in  fish.  Especially 
I  remember  the  magnificent  turbot  which  we  took  off 
the  wild  shore  between  the  frowning  basalt  cliffs  of  the 
Giant's  Causeway,  and  the  rough  headlands  of  Loch 
Swilly.  We  sold  our  fish  in  the  historic  town  of  London- 
derry, where  we  saw  the  old  gun  Morris  Meg,  which  once 
so  successfully  roared  for  King  William,  still  in  its  place 
on  the  old  battlements.  By  a  packet  steamer  plying 
to  Glasgow,  we  despatched  some  of  the  catch  to  that 
greedy  market.  At  Loch  Foyle  there  is  a  good  expanse 
of  sandy  and  mud  bottom  which  nurses  quite  a  harvest 
of  the  sea,  though  —  oddly  enough  —  close  by  off  Rath- 
lin  Island  is  the  only  water  over  one  hundred  fathoms 
deep  until  the  Atlantic  Basin  is  reached.  The  Irish  Sea 
like  the  North  Sea  is  all  shallow  water.  Crossing  to  the 


112  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Isle  of  Man,  we  delayed  there  only  a  short  while,  for 
those  grounds  are  well  known  to  the  Fleetwood  trawlers, 
who  supply  so  much  fish  to  the  dense  population  of 
North  Central  England.  We  found  little  opportunity  of 
trawling  off  the  west  of  Scotland,  the  ocean's  bottom 
being  in  no  way  suited  to  it.  On  reaching  the  Western 
Hebrides,  however,  we  were  once  more  among  many  old 
friends.  From  Stornaway  on  the  Isle  of  Lewis  alone 
some  nine  hundred  drifters  were  pursuing  the  retreating 
armies  of  herring. 

The  German  hordes  have  taught  us  to  think  of  life 
in  large  numbers,  but  were  the  herring  to  elect  a  Kaiser, 
he  would  dominate  in  reality  an  absolutely  indestructible 
host.  For  hundreds  of  years  fishermen  of  all  countries 
have  without  cessation  been  pursuing  these  friends  of 
mankind.  For  centuries  these  inexhaustible  hordes  have 
followed  their  long  pathways  of  the  sea,  swimming  by 
some  strange  instinct  always  more  or  less  over  the  same 
courses  —  ever  with  their  tireless  enemies,  both  in  and 
out  of  the  water,  hot  foot  on  their  tracks.  Sharks,  dog- 
fish, wolf-fish,  cod,  and  every  fish  large  enough  to  swal- 
low them,  gulls,  divers,  auks,  and  almost  every  bird  of 
the  air,  to  say  nothing  of  the  nets  set  now  from  steam- 
propelled  ships,  might  well  threaten  their  speedy  extermi- 
nation. This  is  especially  true  when  we  remember  that 
even  their  eggs  are  preyed  upon  in  almost  incalculable 
bulk  as  soon  as  they  are  deposited.  But  phoenix-like  they 
continue  to  reappear  in  such  vast  quantities  that  they 
are  still  the  cheapest  food  on  the  market.  Such  huge 
numbers  are  caught  at  one  time  that  they  have  now  and 
again  to  be  used  for  fertilizer,  or  dumped  overboard  into 
the  sea.  The  great  bay  of  Stornaway  Harbour  was  so 
deeply  covered  in  oil  from  the  fish  while  we  lay  there, 
that  the  sailing  boats  raced  to  and  fro  before  fine  breezes 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  113 

and  yet  the  wind  could  not  even  ripple  the  surface  of  the 
sea,  as  if  at  last  millennial  conditions  had  materialized. 
Many  times  we  saw  nets  which  had  caught  such  quan- 
tities of  fish  at  once  that  they  had  sunk  to  the  bottom. 
They  were  only  rescued  with  great  difficulty,  and  then 
the  fish  were  so  swollen  by  being  drowned  in  the  net  that 
it  took  hours  of  hard  work  and  delay  to  shake  their  now 
distended  bodies  out  again. 

The  opportunities  for  both  holding  simple  religious 
services  and  rendering  medical  help  from  our  dispensary 
were  numerous,  and  we  thought  sufficiently  needed  to 
call  for  some  sort  of  permanent  effort;  so  later  the  So- 
ciety established  a  small  mission  room  in  the  harbour. 
/  Alcohol  has  always  been  a  menace  to  Scotch  life^, 
though  their  fishermen  were  singularly  free  from  rioting 
and  drunkenness.  Indeed,  their  home-bom  piety  was 
continually  a  protest  to  the  indulgence  of  the  mixed 
crowd  which  at  that  time  followed  King  Henry.  Scores 
of  times  have  I  seen  a  humble  crew  of  poor  fishermen, 
who  themselves  owned  their  small  craft,  observing  the 
Sunday  as  if  they  were  in  their  homes,  while  the  skippers 
of  large  vessels  belonging  to  others  fished  all  the  week 
round  at  the  beck  of  their  absent  owners,  thinking  they 
made  more  money  in  that  way. 

In  1891  the  present  Lord  Southborough,  then  Mr. 
Francis  Hopwood,  and  a  member  of  the  Mission  Board, 
returned  from  a  visit  to  Canada  and  Newfoundland.  He 
brought  before  the  Council  the  opportunities  for  service 
among  the  fishermen  of  the  northwest  Atlantic,  and  the 
suggestion  was  handed  on  to  me  in  the  form  of  a  query. 
Would  I  consider  crossing  the  Atlantic  in  one  of  our 
small  sailing  vessels,  and  make  an  inquiry  into  the 
problem  .f* 

Some  of  my  older  friends  have  thought  that  my  de- 


114  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

cision  to  go  was  made  under  strong  religious  excitement, 
and  in  response  to  some  deep-seated  conviction  that 
material  sacrifices  or  physical  discomforts  commended 
one  to  God.  I  must,  however,  disclaim  all  such  lofty 
motives.  I  have  always  believed  that  the  Good  Samaritan 
went  across  the  road  to  the  wounded  man  just  because 
he  wanted  to.  I  do  not  believe  that  he  felt  any  sacrifice 
or  fear  in  the  matter.  If  he  did,  I  know  very  well  that  I 
did  not.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  everything  about  such 
a  venture  to  attract  my  type  of  mind,  and  making  prep- 
arations for  the  long  voyage  was  an  unmitigated  delight. 

The  boat  which  I  selected  was  ketch-rigged  —  much 
like  a  yawl,  but  more  comfortable  for  lying-to  in  heavy 
weather,  the  sail  area  being  more  evenly  distributed. 
Her  freeboard  being  only  three  feet,  we  replaced  her 
wooden  hatches,  which  were  too  large  for  handling 
patients,  by  iron  ones;  and  also  sheathed  her  forward 
along  the  water-line  with  greenheart  to  protect  her 
planking  in  ice.  For  running  in  high  seas  we  put  a  large 
square  sail  forward,  tripping  the  yard  along  the  fore- 
mast, much  like  a  spinnaker  boom.  Having  a  screw 
steering  gear  which  took  two  men  to  handle  quickly 
enough  when  she  yawed  and  threatened  to  jibe  in  a  big 
swell,  it  proved  very  useful. 

It  was  not  until  the  spring  of  1892  that  we  were  ready 
to  start.  We  had  secured  a  master  with  a  certificate,  for 
though  I  was  myself  a  master  mariner,  and  my  mate  had 
been  in  charge  of  our  vessel  in  the  North  Sea  for  many 
years,  we  had  neither  of  us  been  across  the  Atlantic  be- 
fore. The  skipper  was  a  Comishman,  Trevize  by  name, 
and  a  martinet  on  discipline  —  an  entirely  new  experi- 
ence to  a  crew  of  North  Sea  fishermen.  He  was  so  par- 
ticular about  everything  being  just  so  that  quite  a  few 
days  were  lost  in  starting,  though  well  spent  as  far  as 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  115 

preparedness  went.  Nothing  was  wanting  when  at  last, 
in  the  second  week  of  June,  the  tugboat  let  us  go,  and 
crowds  of  friends  waved  us  good-bye  from  the  pier-head 
as  we  passed  out  with  our  bunting  standing.  We  had  not 
intended  to  touch  land  again  until  it  should  rise  out  of 
the  western  horizon,  but  off  the  south  coast  of  Ireland  we 
met  with  heavy  seas  and  head  winds,  so  we  ran  into 
Crookhaven  to  visit  our  colleagues  who  worked  at  that 
station.  Our  old  patients  in  that  lonely  comer  were  al- 
most as  interested  as  ourselves  in  the  new  venture,  and 
many  were  the  good  eggs  and  "meals  of  greens"  which 
they  brought  down  to  the  ship  as  parting  tokens.  Indeed, 
we  shrewdly  guessed  that  our  "dry"  principles  alone 
robbed  us  of  more  than  "one  drop  o'  potheen"  whose 
birth  the  light  of  the  moon  had  witnessed. 

As  we  were  not  fortunate  in  encountering  fair  winds, 
it  was  not  until  the  twelfth  day  that  we  saw  our  first  ice- 
berg, almost  running  into  it  in  a  heavy  fog.  The  fall  in 
the  temperature  of  the  sea  surface  had  warned  us  that 
we  were  in  the  cold  current,  and  three  or  four  days  of 
dense  fog  emphasized  the  fact.  As  it  was  midsummer,  we 
felt  the  change  keenly,  when  suddenly  on  the  seventeenth 
day  the  fog  lifted,  and  a  high  evergreen-crowned  coast- 
line greeted  our  delighted  eyes.  A  lofty  lighthouse  on  a 
rocky  headland  enabled  us  almost  immediately  to  dis- 
cover our  exact  position.  We  were  just  a  little  north  of 
St.  John's  Harbour,  which,  being  my  first  landfall  across 
the  Atlantic,  impressed  me  as  a  really  marvellous  feat; 
but  what  was  our  surprise  as  we  approached  the  high 
cliffs  which  guard  the  entrance  to  see  dense  columns  of 
smoke  arising,  and  to  feel  the  offshore  wind  grow  hotter 
and  hotter  as  the  pilot  tug  towed  us  between  the  head- 
lands. For  the  third  time  in  its  history  the  city  of  St. 
John's  was  in  flames. 


116  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

The  heat  was  fierce  when  we  at  last  anchored,  and  had 
the  height  of  the  blaze  not  passed,  we  should  certainly 
have  been  glad  to  seek  again  the  cool  of  our  icy  friends 
outside.  Some  ships  had  even  been  burned  at  their 
anchors.  We  could  count  thirteen  fiercely  raging  fires 
in  various  parts  of  the  city,  which  looked  like  one  vast 
funeral  pyre.  Only  the  brick  chimneys  of  the  houses 
remained  standing  blackened  and  charred.  Smoke  and 
occasional  flame  would  burst  out  here  and  there  as  the 
fickle  eddies  of  wind,  influenced,  no  doubt,  by  the  heat, 
whirled  around  as  if  in  sport  over  the  scene  of  man's  dis- 
comfitures. On  the  hillside  stood  a  solitary  house  almost 
untouched,  which,  had  there  been  any  reason  for  its 
being  held  sacred,  might  well  have  served  as  a  demon- 
stration of  Heaven's  special  intervention  in  its  behalf. 
As  it  was,  it  seemed  to  mock  the  still  smouldering  wreck 
of  the  beautiful  stone  cathedral  just  beside  it.  Among 
the  ruins  in  this  valley  of  desolation  little  groups  of  men 
darted  hither  and  thither,  resembling  from  the  harbour 
nothing  so  much  as  tiny  black  imps  gloating  over  a  con- 
genial environment.  I  hope  never  again  to  see  the  sight 
that  might  well  have  suggested  Gehenna  to  a  less  active 
imagination  than  Dante's. 

Huts  had  been  erected  in  open  places  to  shelter  the 
homeless;  long  queues  of  hungry  human  beings  defiled 
before  temporary  booths  which  served  out  soup  and 
other  rations.  Every  nook  and  corner  of  house-room  left 
was  crowded  to  overflowing  with  derelict  persons  and 
their  belongings.  The  roads  to  the  country,  like  those 
now  in  the  environs  of  the  towns  in  northern  France, 
were  dotted  with  exiles  and  belated  vehicles,  hauling  in 
every  direction  the  remnants  of  household  goods.  The 
feeling  as  of  a  rudely  disturbed  antheap  dominated  one's 
mind,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  it  all,  the  hospitality  and  wel- 


NORTH  SEA  WORK  117 

come  which  we  as  strangers  received  was  as  wonderful 
as  if  we  had  been  a  relief  ship  laden  with  supplies  to  re- 
place the  immense  amount  destroyed  in  the  ships  and 
stores  of  the  city.  Moreover,  the  cheerfulness  of  the  town 
was  amazing.  Scarcely  a  "peep"  or  "squeal"  did  we 
hear,  and  not  a  single  diatribe  against  the  authorities. 
Every  one  had  suffered  together.  Nor  was  it  due  to  any 
one's  fault.  True,  the  town  water-supply  had  been  tem- 
porarily out  of  commission,  some  stranger  was  said  to 
have  been  smoking  in  the  hay  loft,  Providence  had  not 
specially  intervened  to  save  property,  and  hence  this 
result.  Thus  to  our  relief  it  was  a  city  of  hope,  not  of 
despair,  and  to  our  amazement  they  were  able  to  show 
most  kindly  interest  in  problems  such  as  ours  which 
seemed  so  remote  at  the  moment.  None  of  us  will  ever 
forget  their  kindness,  from  the  Governor  Sir  Terence 
O'Brien,  and  the  Prime  Minister,  Sir  William  Whiteway, 
to  the  humblest  stevedore  on  the  wharves. 

I  had  expected  to  spend  the  greater  part  of  our  time 
cruising  among  the  fishing  schooners  out  of  sight  of  land 
on  the  big  Banks  as  we  did  in  the  North  Sea;  but  I  was 
advised  that  owing  to  fog  and  isolation,  each  vessel 
working  separately  and  bringing  its  own  catch  to  market, 
it  would  be  a  much  more  profitable  outlay  of  time,  if 
we  were  to  follow  the  large  fleet  of  over  one  hundred 
schooners,  with  some  thirty  thousand  fishermen,  women, 
and  children  which  had  just  sailed  North  for  summer 
work  along  the  coast  of  Labrador.  To  better  aid  us  the 
Government  provided  a  pilot  free  of  expense,  and  their 
splendid  Superintendent  of  Fisheries,  Mr.  Adolph  Niel- 
sen, also  accepted  the  invitation  to  accompany  us,  to 
make  our  experiment  more  exhaustive  and  valuable  by 
a  special  scientific  inquiry  into  the  habits  and  manner 
of  the  fish  as  well  as  of  the  fishermen.  Naturally  a  good 


118  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

deal  of  delay  had  occurred  owing  to  the  unusual  con- 
gestion of  business  which  needed  immediate  attention 
and  the  unfortunate  temporary  lack  of  facilities;  but  we 
got  under  way  at  last,  and  sailing  "down  North"  some 
four  hundred  miles  and  well  outside  the  land,  eventually 
ran  in  on  a  parallel  and  made  the  Labrador  coast  on  the 
4th  of  August. 

The  exhilarating  memory  of  that  day  is  one  which  will 
die  only  when  we  do.  A  glorious  sun  shone  over  an  oily 
ocean  of  cerulean  blue,  over  a  hundred  towering  icebergs 
of  every  fantastic  shape,  and  flashing  all  of  the  colours 
of  the  rainbow  from  their  gleaming  pinnacles  as  they 
rolled  on  the  long  and  lazy  swell.  Birds  familiar  and 
strange  left  the  dense  shoals  of  rippling  fish,  over  which 
great  flocks  were  hovering  and  quarrelling  in  noisy  en- 
joyment, to  wave  us  welcome  as  they  swept  in  joyous 
circles  overhead. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR 

Twenty  years  have  passed  away  since  that  day,  and  a 
thousand  more  important  affairs  which  have  occurred 
in  the  meantime  have  faded  from  my  memory;  but  still 
its  events  stand  out  clear  and  sharp.  The  large  and  lofty 
island,  its  top  covered  with  green  verdure,  so  wonderful 
a  landmark  from  the  sea,  its  peaks  capped  with  the 
jfleecy  mist  of  early  morning,  rose  in  a  setting  of  the 
purest  azure  blue.  For  the  first  time  I  saw  the  faces  of 
its  ruddy  cliffs,  their  ledges  picked  out  with  the  homes 
of  myriad  birds.  Its  feet  were  bathed  in  the  dark,  rich 
green  of  the  Atlantic  water,  edged  by  the  line  of  pure 
white  breakers,  where  the  gigantic  swell  lazily  hurled 
immeasurable  mountains  of  water  against  its  titanic 
bastions,  evoking  peals  of  sound  like  thunder  from  its 
cavernous  recesses  —  a  very  riot  of  magnificence.  The 
great  schools  of  whales,  noisily  slapping  the  calm  siu'face 
of  the  sea  with  their  huge  tails  as  in  an  abandon  of  joy, 
dived  and  rose,  and  at  times  threw  the  whole  of  their 
mighty  carcasses  right  out  of  water  for  a  bath  in  the 
glorious  morning  simshine.  The  shoals  of  fish  everywhere 
breaching  the  water,  and  the  silver  streaks  which  flashed 
beneath  our  bows  as  we  lazed  along,  suggested  that  the 
whole  vast  ocean  was  too  small  to  hold  its  riches. 

When  we  realized  that  practically  no  man  had  ever 
lived  there,  and  few  had  even  seen  it,  it  seemed  to  over- 
whelm us,  coming  as  we  did  from  the  crowded  Island  of 
our  birth,  where  notices  not  to  trespass  haunted  even 
the  dreams  of  the  average  man. 

A  serried  rank  of  range  upon  range  of  hills,  reaching 


120  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

north  and  south  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see  from  the 
masthead,  was  rising  above  our  horizon  behind  a  very 
surfeit  of  islands,  bewildering  the  minds  of  men  accus- 
tomed to  our  English  and  North  Sea  coast-lines. 

In  a  ship  just  the  size  of  the  famous  Matthew,  we  had 
gone  west,  following  almost  the  exact  footsteps  of  the 
great  John  Cabot  when  just  four  hundred  years  before 
he  had  fared  forth  on  his  famous  venture  of  discovery. 
We  seemed  now  almost  able  to  share  the  exhilaration 
which  only  such  experiences  can  afford  the  human  soul, 
and  the  vast  potential  resources  for  the  blessing  of  hu- 
manity of  this  great  land  still  practically  untouched. 

At  last  we  came  to  anchor  among  many  schooners  in 
a  wonderful  natural  harbour  called  Domino  Run,  so 
named  because  the  Northern  fleets  all  pass  through  it  on 
their  way  North  and  South.  Had  we  been  painted  scarlet, 
and  flown  the  Black  Jack  instead  of  the  Red  Ensign,  we 
could  not  have  attracted  more  attention.  Flags  of  greet- 
ing were  run  up  to  all  mastheads,  and  boats  from  all 
sides  were  soon  aboard  inquiring  into  the  strange  phe- 
nomenon. Our  object  explained,  we  soon  had  calls  for  a 
doctor,  and  it  has  been  the  experience  of  almost  every 
visitor  to  the  coast  from  that  day  to  this  that  he  is  ex- 
pected to  have  a  knowledge  of  medicine. 

One  impression  made  on  my  mind  that  day  imdoubt- 
edly  influenced  all  my  subsequent  actions.  Late  in  the 
evening,  when  the  rush  of  visitors  was  largely  over,  I 
noticed  a  miserable  bunch  of  boards,  serving  as  a  boat, 
with  only  a  dab  of  tar  along  its  seams,  lying  motionless 
a  little  way  from  us.  In  it,  sitting  silent,  was  a  haK-clad, 
brown-haired,  brown-faced  figure.  After  long  hesitation, 
during  which  time  I  had  been  watching  him  from  the 
rail,  he  suddenly  asked: 

*'Be  you  a  real  doctor?" 


Cape  Uivuk 


The  Tickle  Anchorage 
THE  LABRADOR  COAST 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         121 

"That's  what  I  call  myself,"  I  replied. 

"Us  has  n't  got  no  money,"  he  fenced,  "but  there's  a 
very  sick  man  ashore,  if  so  be  you'd  come  and  see  him." 

A  little  later  he  led  me  to  a  tiny  sod-covered  hovel, 
compared  with  which  the  Irish  cabins  were  palaces.  It 
had  one  window  of  odd  fragments  of  glass.  The  floor  was 
of  pebbles  from  the  beach;  the  earth  walls  were  damp 
and  chilly.  There  were  half  a  dozen  rude  wooden  bunks 
built  in  tiers  around  the  single  room,  and  a  group  of 
some  six  neglected  children,  frightened  by  our  arrival, 
were  huddled  together  in  one  comer.  A  very  sick  man 
was  coughing  his  soul  out  in  the  darkness  of  a  lower 
bunk,  while  a  pitiably  covered  woman  gave  him  cold 
water  to  sip  out  of  a  spoon.  There  was  no  furniture  ex- 
cept a  small  stove  with  an  iron  pipe  leading  through  a 
hole  in  the  roof. 

My  heart  sank  as  I  thought  of  the  little  I  could  do  for 
the  sufferer  in  such  surroundings.  He  had  pneumonia,  a 
high  fever,  and  was  probably  tubercular.  The  thought 
of  our  attractive  little  hospital  on  board  at  once  rose  to 
my  mind;  but  how  could  one  sail  away  with  this  husband 
and  father,  probably  never  to  bring  him  back.  Advice, 
medicine,  a  few  packages  of  food  were  only  temporizing. 
The  poor  mother  could  never  nurse  him  and  tend  the 
family.  Furthermore,  their  earning  season,  "while  the 
fish  were  in,"  was  slipping  away.  To  pray  for  the  man, 
and  with  the  family,  was  easy,  but  scarcely  satisfying. 
A  hospital  and  a  trained  nurse  was  the  only  chance  for 
this  bread-winner  —  and  neither  was  available. 

I  called  in  a  couple  of  months  later  as  we  came  South 
before  the  approach  of  winter.  Snow  was  already  on  the 
ground.  The  man  was  dead  and  buried;  there  was  no 
provision  whatever  for  the  family,  who  were  destitute, 
except  for  the  hollow  mockery  of  a  widow's  grant  of 


122  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

twenty  dollars  a  year.  This,  moreover,  had  to  be  taken 
up  in  goods  at  a  truck  store,  less  debts  if  she  owed  any. 

Among  the  nine  hundred  patients  that  still  show  on 
the  records  of  that  long-ago  voyage,  some  stand  out 
more  than  others  for  their  peculiar  pathos  and  their 
utter  helplessness.  I  shall  never  forget  one  poor  Eskimo. 
In  firing  a  cannon  to  salute  the  arrival  of  the  Moravian 
Mission  ship,  the  gun  exploded  prematurely,  blowing  off 
both  the  man's  arms  below  the  elbows.  He  had  been  lying 
on  his  back  for  a  fortnight,  the  pathetic  stumps  covered 
only  with  far  from  sterile  rags  dipped  in  cold  water.  We 
remained  some  days,  and  did  all  we  could  for  his  benefit; 
but  he  too  joined  the  great  host  that  is  forever  "going 
west,"  for  want  of  what  the  world  fails  to  give  them. 

It  is  not  given  to  every  member  of  our  profession  to 
enjoy  the  knowledge  that  he  alone  stands  between  the 
helpless  and  suffering  or  death,  for  in  civilization  mod- 
em amenities  have  almost  annihilated  space  and  time, 
and  the  sensations  of  the  Yankee  at  the  Court  of  King 
Arthur  are  destroyed  by  the  realization  of  competitors, 
"just  as  good,"  even  if  it  often  does  leave  one  conscious 
of  Hmitations.  The  successful  removal  of  a  molar  which 
has  given  torture  for  weeks  in  a  dentistless  country, 
gains  one  as  much  gratitude  as  the  amputation  of  a  limb. 
One  mere  boy  came  to  me  with  necrosis  of  one  side  of 
his  lower  jaw  due  to  nothing  but  neglected  toothache.  It 
had  to  be  dug  out  from  the  new  covering  of  bone  which 
had  grown  up  all  around  it.  The  whimsical  expression  of 
his  lop-sided  face  still  haunts  me. 

Deformities  went  untreated.  The  crippled  and  blind 
halted  through  life,  victims  of  what  "the  blessed  Lord 
saw  best  for  them."  The  torture  of  an  ingrowing  toe-nail, 
which  could  be  relieved  in  a  few  minutes,  had  incapaci- 
tated one  poor  father  for  years.  Tuberculosis  and  rickets 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         123 

carried  on  their  evil  work  unchecked.  Preventable  pov- 
erty was  the  efficient  handmaid  of  these  two  latter 
diseases. 

There  was  also  much  social  work  to  be  done  in  con- 
nection with  the  medical.  Education  in  every  one  of  its 
branches  —  especially  public  health  —  was  almost  non- 
existent —  as  were  many  simple  social  amenities  which 
might  have  been  so  easily  induced. 

At  one  village  a  woman  with  five  children  asked  us  if 
we  could  marry  her  to  her  husband.  They  had  never  been 
together  when  a  parson  happened  along,  and  they  now 
lived  in  a  lonely  cove  three  miles  away.  This  seemed  a 
genuine  case  of  distress;  and  as  it  happened  a  parson  was 
taking  a  passage  with  us,  we  sent  two  of  our  crew  over 
in  a  boat  to  round  up  the  groom.  Apparently  he  was  not 
at  all  anxious,  but  being  a  very  small  man  and  she  a 
large  woman,  he  discreetly  acquiesced.  The  wedding  was 
held  on  board  our  ship,  every  one  entering  into  the  spirit 
of  the  unusual  occasion.  The  main  hold  was  crammed 
with  guests,  bells  were  rung  and  flags  flown,  guns  fired, 
and  at  night  distress  rockets  were  sent  up.  We  kept  in 
touch  with  the  happy  couple  for  years,  till  once  more 
they  moved  away  to  try  their  luck  elsewhere. 

Obviously  the  coast  offered  us  work  that  would  not 
be  done  unless  we  did  it.  Here  was  real  need  along  any 
line  on  which  one  could  labour,  in  a  section  of  our  own 
Empire,  where  the  people  embodied  all  our  best  sea  tra- 
ditions. They  exhibited  many  of  the  attractive  char- 
acteristics which,  even  when  buried  beneath  habits  and 
customs  the  outcome  of  their  environment,  always  en- 
dear men  of  the  sea  to  the  genuine  Anglo-Saxon.  They 
were  uncomplaining,  optimistic,  splendidly  resourceful, 
cheerful  and  generous  ~  and  after  all  in  one  sense  soap 
and  water  only  makes  the  outside  of  the  platter  clean. 


124  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

I  confess  that  we  had  greatly  enjoyed  the  adventure 
qua  adventure.  Mysterious  fjords  which  wound  out  of 
sight  into  the  fastnesses  of  unknown  mountains,  and 
which  were  entirely  uncharted,  fairly  shouted  an  in- 
vitation to  enter  and  discover  what  was  round  the  next 
corner.  Islands  by  the  hundred,  hitherto  never  placed 
on  any  map,  challenged  one's  hydrographic  skill.  Fam- 
ilies of  strange  birds,  which  came  swinging  seaward  as  the 
season  advanced,  suggested  a  virgin  field  for  hunting. 
Berries  and  flowering  plants,  as  excellent  as  they  were 
unfamiliar,  appealed  for  exploration.  Great  boulders 
perched  on  perilous  peaks,  torn  and  twisted  strata,  with 
here  and  there  raised  beaches,  and  great  outcrops  of 
black  trap-rock  piercing  through  red  granite  cliffs  in 
giant  vertical  seams  —  all  piqued  one's  curiosity  to  know 
the  geology  of  this  unknown  land.  Some  stone  arrow- 
heads and  knives,  brought  to  me  by  a  fisherman,  to- 
gether with  the  memories  that  the  Norse  Vikings  and 
their  competitors  on  the  scroll  of  discovery  made  their 
first  landfall  on  this  the  nearest  section  of  the  American 
coast  to  Europe,  excited  one's  curiosity  to  know  more  of 
these  shores.  The  dense  growth  of  evergreen  trees  abound- 
ing in  every  river  valley,  and  the  exquisite  streams  with 
trout  and  salmon  and  seals  attracted  one  whose  famil- 
iarity with  sport  and  forests  was  inseparably  connected 
with  notices  to  trespassers. 

It  only  wanted  an  adventure  such  as  we  had  one  day 
while  saiUng  up  a  fjord  on  a  prosaic  professional  call, 
when  we  upset  our  cutter  and  had  to  camp  for  the  night, 
to  give  spice  to  our  other  experiences,  and  made  us  wish 
to  return  another  year,  better  equipped,  and  with  a  more 
competent  staff. 

I  am  far  from  being  the  only  person  from  the  outside 
world  who  has  experienced  what  Wallace  describes  as 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         125 

"the  Lure  of  the  Labrador."  It  was  a  genuine  surprise 
to  me  one  morning  to  find  ice  on  deck  —  a  scale  of  spark- 
ling crystals  most  beautifully  picking  out  the  water-line 
of  our  little  craft.  It  was  only  then  that  I  realized  that 
October  had  come.  The  days,  so  full  of  incident,  had 
passed  away  like  ships  in  the  night.  Whither  away  was 
the  question?  We  could  not  stay  even  though  we  felt  the 
urgent  call  to  remain.  So  "Heigho  for  the  southward  bar" 
and  a  visit  to  St.  John's  to  try  and  arouse  interest  in  the 
new-discovered  problems,  before  we  should  once  more 
let  go  our  stern  lines  and  be  bowling  homeward  before 
the  fall  nor' westers  to  dear  old  England. 

Home-going  craft  had  generously  carried  our  story 
before  us  to  the  city  of  St.  John's.  The  Board  of  Trade 
commended  our  effort.  The  papers  had  written  of  the 
new  phenomenon;  the  politicians  had  not  refrained  from 
commendation.  His  Excellency  the  Governor  made  our 
path  plain  by  calling  a  meeting  in  Government  House, 
where  the  following  resolution  was  passed: 

"That  this  meeting,  representing  the  principal  mer- 
chants and  traders  carrying  on  the  fisheries,  especially 
on  the  Labrador  coast,  and  others  interested  in  the  wel- 
fare of  this  colony,  desires  to  tender  its  warmest  thanks 
to  the  directors  of  the  Deep-Sea  Mission  for  sending 
their  hospital  ship  Albert  to  visit  the  settlement  on  the 
Labrador  coast. 

"Much  of  our  fishing  industry  is  carried  on  in  regions 
beyond  the  ordinary  reach  of  medical  aid,  or  of  charity, 
and  it  is  with  the  deepest  sense  of  gratitude  that  this 
meeting  learns  of  the  amount  of  medical  and  surgical 
work  done.  .  .  . 

"This  meeting  also  desires  to  express  the  hope  that 
the  directors  may  see  their  way  to  continue  the  work 
thus  begun,  and  should  they  do  so,  they  may  be  assured 


126  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

of  the  earnest  cooperation  of  all  classes  of  this  com- 
munity." 

When  at  last  we  said  good-bye  on  our  homeward  voy- 
age, our  cabins  were  loaded  with  generous  souvenirs  for 
the  journey,  and  no  king  on  his  throne  was  happier  than 
every  man  of  the  crew  of  the  good  ship  Albert. 

Our  report  to  the  Council  in  London,  followed  by  the 
resolution  sent  by  the  Newfoundland  Committee,  in- 
duced the  Society  to  repeat  the  experiment  on  a  larger 
scale  the  following  spring.  Thus,  with  two  young  doctors, 
Elliott  Curwen  of  Cambridge  and  Arthur  Bobardt 
from  Australia,  and  two  nurses.  Miss  Cawardine  and 
Miss  Williams,  we  again  set  out  the  following  June. 

The  voyage  was  uneventful  except  that  I  was  nearly 
left  beliind  in  mid-Atlantic.  While  playing  cricket  on 
deck  our  last  ball  went  over  the  side,  and  I  after  it,  shout- 
ing to  the  helmsman  to  tack  back.  This  he  did,  but  I 
failed  to  cut  him  off  the  first  time,  as  he  got  a  bit  rattled. 
However,  we  rescued  the  ball. 

We  had  chosen  two  islands  two  hundred  miles  apart 
for  cottage  hospitals,  one  at  Battle  Harbour,  on  the 
north  side  of  the  entrance  of  the  St.  Lawrence  (Straits  of 
Belle  Isle),  and  the  other  at  Indian  Harbour,  out  in  the 
Atlantic  at  the  mouth  of  the  great  Hamilton  Inlet.  Both 
places  were  the  centres  of  large  fisheries,  and  were  the 
"bring-ups"  for  numberless  schooners  of  the  Labrador 
fleet  on  their  way  North  and  South.  The  first,  a  building 
already  half  finished,  was  donated  by  a  local  fishery  firm 
by  the  name  of  Baine,  Johnston  and  Company.  This 
was  quickly  made  habitable,  and  patients  were  admitted 
under  Dr.  Bobardt's  care.  The  second  building,  as- 
sembled at  St.  John's,  was  shipped  by  the  donors,  who 
were  the  owners  of  the  Indian  Harbour  fishery.  Job 
Brothers  and  Company.  Owing  to  difficulties  in  landing. 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         127 

this  building  was  not  completed  and  ready  for  use  until 
the  following  year,  so  Dr.  Curwen  took  charge  of  the 
hospital  ship  Albert,  and  I  cruised  as  far  north  as  Okkak 
(lat.  57°)  in  the  Princess  May,  a  midget  steam  launch, 
eight  feet  wide,  with  a  cook  and  an  engineer.  As  there 
was  no  coal  obtainable  in  the  North,  we  used  wood,  and 
her  fire-box  being  small  the  amount  of  cutting  entailed 
left  a  permanent  impression  on  our  biceps. 

A  friend  from  Ireland  had  presented  this  little  boat, 
which  I  found  lying  up  on  the  Chester  Race-Course,  near 
our  home  on  the  Sands  of  Dee.  We  had  repaired  her  and 
steamed  her  through  the  canal  into  the  Mersey,  where, 
somewhat  to  our  humiliation,  she  had  been  slung  up 
onto  the  deck  of  an  Allan  liner  for  her  trans-Atlantic 
passage,  as  if  she  were  nothing  but  an  extra  hand  satchel. 
Nor  was  our  pride  restored  when  on  her  arrival  it  was 
found  that  her  funnel  was  missing  among  the  general 
baggage  in  the  hold.  We  had  to  wait  in  St.  John's  for  a 
new  one  before  starting  on  our  trip  North.  The  close  of 
the  voyage  proved  a  fitting  corollary.  Li  crossing  the 
Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  the  last  boat  to  leave  the  Labrador, 
we  ran  short  of  fuel,  and  had  to  burn  our  cabin-top  to 
make  the  French  shore,  having  also  lost  our  compass 
overboard.  Here  we  delayed  repairing  and  refitting  so 
long  that  the  authorities  in  St.  John's  became  alarmed 
and  despatched  their  mail  steamer  in  search  of  us.  I 
still  remember  my  astonishment,  when,  on  boarding  the 
steamer,  the  lively  skipper,  a  very  tender-hearted  father 
of  a  family,  threw  both  arms  around  me  with  a  mighty 
hug  and  exclaimed,  "Thank  God,  we  all  thought  you 
were  gone.  A  schooner  picked  up  your  flagpole  at  sea." 
Poor  fellow,  he  was  a  fine  Christian  seaman,  but  only  a 
year  or  two  later  he  perished  with  his  large  steamer  while 
I  still  rove  this  rugged  coast. 


128  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

That  summer  we  visited  the  stations  of  the  Moravian 
Brethren,  who  were  kindness  personified  to  us.  Their 
stations,  five  in  number,  dated  back  over  a  hundred  and 
thirty  years,  yet  they  had  never  had  a  doctor  among 
them.  It  would  scarcely  be  modest  for  me  to  protest  that 
they  were  the  worse  off  for  that  circumstance.  Each 
station  was  well  armed  with  homoeopathic  pills,  and  at 
least  those  do  no  harm;  while  one  old  German  house- 
father had  really  performed  with  complete  success  crani- 
otomy and  delivery  of  a  child  en  morcellement,  in  the  case 
of  a  colleague's  wife.  During  our  stay  they  gave  us  plenty 
of  work  among  their  Eskimos,  and  were  good  enough  to 
report  most  favourably  of  our  work  to  their  home  Com- 
mittee. 

As  there  was  no  chart  of  any  use  for  the  coast  north  of 
Hopedale,  few  if  any  corrections  having  been  made  in 
the  topographic  efforts  of  the  long  late  Captain  Cook,  of 
around-the-world  reputation,  one  of  the  Brethren,  Mr. 
Christopher  Schmidt,  joined  the  Princess  May  to  help 
me  find  their  northern  stations  among  the  plethora  of 
islands  which  fringe  the  coast  in  that  vicinity.  Never  in 
my  life  had  I  expected  any  journey  half  so  wonderful. 
We  travelled  through  endless  calm  fjords,  runs,  tickles, 
bays,  and  straits  without  ever  seeing  the  open  sea,  and 
with  hardly  a  ripple  on  the  surface.  We  passed  high 
mountains  and  lofty  cliffs,  crossed  the  mouths  of  large 
rivers,  left  groves  of  spruce  and  fir  and  larches  on  both 
sides  of  us,  and  saw  endless  birds,  among  them  the 
Canada  goose,  eider  duck,  surf  scoters,  and  many  com- 
moner sea-fowl.  As  it  was  both  impossible  and  dangerous 
to  proceed  after  dark,  when  no  longer  able  to  run  we 
would  go  ashore  and  gather  specimens  of  the  abundant 
and  beautiful  sub-arctic  flora,  and  occasionally  capture 
a  bird  or  a  dish  of  trout  to  help  out  our  diminutive  larder. 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         129 

Among  the  Eskimos  I  found  a  great  deal  of  tubercu- 
losis and  much  eye  trouble.  Around  the  Moravian  Mission 
stations  wooden  houses  had  largely  replaced  the  former 
"tubiks,"  or  skin  tents,  which  were  moved  as  occasion 
required  and  so  provided  for  sanitation.  These  wooden 
huts  were  undrained,  dark  and  dirty  to  a  remarkable 
degree.  No  water  supply  was  provided,  and  the  spaces 
between  the  houses  were  simply  indescribable  garbage 
heaps,  presided  over  by  innumerable  dogs.  The  average 
life  was  very  short  and  infant  mortality  high.  The  best 
for  which  we  could  hope  in  the  way  of  morals  among 
these  people  was  that  a  natural  unmorahty  was  some  oflf- 
set  to  the  existing  conditions.  The  features  of  the  native 
life  which  appealed  most  to  us  were  the  universal  opti- 
mism, the  laughing  good-nature  and  contentment,  and 
the  Sunday  cleanliness  of  the  entire  congregation  which 
swarmed  into  the  chapel  service,  a  welcome  respite  from 
the  perennial  dirt  of  the  week  days.  Moreover,  nearly  all 
had  been  taught  to  read  and  write  in  Eskimo,  though 
there  is  no  literature  in  that  language  to  read,  except 
such  books  as  have  been  translated  by  the  Moravian 
Brethren.  At  that  time  a  strict  policy  of  teaching  no 
English  had  been  adopted.  Words  lacking  in  the  lan- 
guage, like  "God,"  "love,"  etc.,  were  substituted  by 
German  words.  Nearly  every  Eskimo  counted  "ein, 
zwei,  drei."  In  one  of  my  lectures,  on  returning  to  Eng- 
land, I  mentioned  that  as  the  Eskimos  had  never  seen  a 
lamb  or  a  sheep  either  alive  or  in  a  picture,  the  Moravians, 
in  order  to  offer  them  an  intelligible  and  appealing  simile, 
had  most  wisely  substituted  the  kotik,  or  white  seal,  for 
the  phrase  "the  Lamb  of  God."  One  old  lady  in  my 
audience  must  have  felt  that  the  good  Brethren  were 
tampering  unjustifiably  with  Holy  Writ,  for  the  follow- 
ing summer,  from  the  barrels  of  clothing  sent  out  to  the 


130  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Labrador,  was  extracted  a  dirty,  distorted,  and  much- 
mangled  and  wholly  sorry-looking  woolly  toy  lamb.  Its 
raison  d'etre  was  a  mystery  until  we  read  the  legend 
carefully  pinned  to  one  dislocated  leg,  "Sent  in  order 
that  the  heathen  may  know  better." 

Their  love  for  music  and  ability  to  do  part-playing  and 
singing  also  greatly  impressed  us,  and  we  spent  many 
evenings  enjoying  their  brass  bands  and  their  Easter  and 
Christmas  carols.  We  made  some  records  of  these  on  our 
Edison  phonograph,  and  they  were  overpowered  with  joy 
when  they  heard  their  own  voices  coming  back  to  them 
from  the  machine.  The  magic  lantern  also  proved  exceed- 
ingly popular,  and  several  tried  to  touch  the  pictures 
and  see  if  they  could  not  hold  them.  We  were  also  able 
to  show  some  hastily  made  lantern  slides  of  themselves, 
and  I  shall  never  forget  their  joyful  excitement.  The  fol- 
lowing season,  in  giving  them  some  lantern  views,  we 
chanced  to  show  a  slide  of  an  old  Eskimo  woman  who 
had  died  during  the  winter.  The  subsequent  commotion 
caused  among  the  "little  people"  was  unintelligible  to 
us  until  one  of  the  Moravian  Brethren  explained  that 
they  thought  her  spirit  had  taken  visible  form  and  re- 
turned to  her  own  haunts. 

I  happened  to  be  in  the  gardens  at  Nain  when  a 
northerly  air  made  it  feel  chilly  and  the  thermometer 
stood  only  a  little  above  freezing.  A  troop  of  Eskimo 
women  came  out  to  cover  up  the  potatoes.  Every  row  of 
potatoes  is  covered  with  arched  sticks  and  long  strips  of 
canvas  along  them.  A  huge  roll  of  sacking  is  kept  near 
each  row  and  the  whole  is  drawn  over  and  the  potatoes 
are  tucked  in  bed  for  the  night.  I  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  lift  the  bedclothes  and  shake  hands  and 
say  good-night  to  one  of  the  nearest  plants,  whereat  the 
merry  little  people  went  off  into  convulsions  of  laughter. 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         131 

At  Hopedale  there  was  a  large  Danish  ship  with  over 
six  hundred  tons  of  cargo  for  the  new  Moravian  buildings. 
The  Brethren  do  not  build  as  we  are  doing  from  coast 
material.  In  order  to  save  time  and  also  to  have  more 
substantial  buildings,  they  are  cut  out  and  built  in 
Germany,  photographed,  and  each  piece  marked.  Then 
they  are  taken  to  pieces,  shipped,  and  sent  out  here  for 
erection. 

Some  years  ago  in  Germany,  when  the  Socialists  were 
wearing  beards  and  mustaches,  all  respectable  people 
used  to  shave.  Therefore  the  missionaries  being  Germans 
insisted  on  the  Eskimos  shaving  as  they  did.  The  result 
is  that  at  one  store  at  least  a  stock  of  ancient  razors  are 
left  on  hand,  for  now  neither  missionary  nor  Eskimo 
shaves  in  the  inhospitable  climate  of  this  country.  A 
small  stock  of  these  razors  was,  therefore,  left  on  my 
account  in  some  graves  from  which  one  or  two  Eskimos 
were  good  enough  to  go  and  get  us  a  few  ancient  stone 
implements.  It  is  a  marvellous  thing  how  superstition 
still  clings  around  the  very  best  of  native  Christian 
communities. 

The  Moravian  Mission  is  a  trading  mission.  This  trad- 
ing policy  in  some  aspects  is  in  its  favour.  It  is  unques- 
tionably part  of  a  message  of  real  love  to  a  brother  to  put 
within  his  reach  at  reasonable  rates  those  adjuncts  of 
civilized  life  that  help  to  make  less  onerous  his  hard 
lot.  Trade,  however,  is  always  a  difficult  form  of  charity, 
and  the  barter  system,  common  to  this  coast,  being  in 
vogue  at  the  Moravian  Mission  stations  also,  practically 
every  Eskimo  was  in  debt  to  them.  In  reality  this  caused 
a  vicious  circle,  for  it  encouraged  directly  the  outstand- 
ing fault  of  the  Eskimo,  his  readiness  to  leave  the  morrow 
to  care  for  itself  so  long  as  he  does  not  starve  to-day. 
Like  a  race  of  children,  they  need  the  stimulus  of  neces- 


132  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

sity  to  make  them  get  out  and  do  their  best  while  the 
opportunity  exists.  In  the  past  twenty-six  years  I  have 
made  many  voyages  to  one  and  another  of  the  stations 
of  the  Brethren,  and  have  learned  to  love  them  all  very 
sincerely  as  individuals,  though  their  mission  policies  are 
their  own  and  not  mine. 

I  remember  once  in  Nain  the  slob  ice  had  already 
made  ballicaters  and  the  biting  cold  of  winter  so  far 
north  had  set  in  with  all  its  vigour.  There  was  a  heavy 
sea  and  a  gale  of  wind.  One  of  two  boats  which  had  been 
out  all  day  had  not  come  in.  The  sea  was  so  rough  and 
the  wind  so  strong  that  the  occupants  of  the  first  boat 
could  not  face  it,  and  so  had  run  in  imder  the  land  and 
walked  all  the  way  round,  towing  their  boat  by  a  long 
line  from  the  shore.  Night  came  on  and  the  second  boat 
had  not  appeared.  Next  morning  the  Nain  folk  knew  that 
some  accident  must  have  happened.  Some  men  reported 
that  the  evening  before  they  had  seen  through  a  glass  the 
boat  trying  to  beat  against  the  storm,  and  then  disap- 
pear. The  Eskimos  gathered  together  to  see  what  could 
be  done  and  then  decided  that  it  was  kismet  —  and  went 
their  way.  The  following  evening  a  tiny  light  was  seen 
on  the  far  shore  of  the  bay  —  some  one  must  be  alive 
there.  There  was  no  food  or  shelter  there,  and  it  was 
obvious  that  help  was  needed.  The  gale  was  still  blowing 
in  fury  and  the  sea  was  as  rough  as  ever,  and  Eskimos 
and  missionaries  decided  that  in  their  unsea worthy  boats 
they  could  do  nothing.  There  was  one  dissentient  voice 
—  Brother  Schmidt;  and  he  went  and  rescued  them.  One 
was  nearly  spent.  When  their  boat  had  capsized,  one 
man,  a  woman,  and  a  lad  had  been  drowned,  but  two 
men  had  succeeded  in  getting  into  their  kajaks  and 
floated  off  when  the  disaster  happened. 

With  October  came  the  necessity  for  returning  South, 


ESKIMO  GIRLS 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         133 

and  the  long  dark  nights  spent  at  the  Httle  fishing  sta- 
tions as  we  journeyed  from  place  to  place  proved  all  too 
short.  The  gatherings  for  lantern  meetings,  for  simple 
services,  for  spinning  yarns,  together  with  medicine  and 
such  surgery  as  we  could  accomplish  under  the  circum- 
stances, made  every  moment  busy  and  enjoyable.  One 
outstanding  feature,  however,  everywhere  impressed  an 
Englishman  —  the  absolute  necessity  for  some  standard 
medium  of  exchange.  Till  one  has  seen  the  truck  system 
at  work,  its  evil  effects  in  enslaving  and  demoralizing  the 
poor  are  impossible  to  realize. 

All  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  coast,  the  poorer 
people  would  show  me  their  "settling  up"  as  they  called 
their  account,  though  many  never  got  as  far  as  having 
any  "settling  up"  given  them  —  so  they  lived  and  died 
in  debt  to  their  merchant.  They  never  knew  the  inde- 
pendence of  a  dollar  in  their  pockets  and  the  consequent 
incentive  and  value  of  thrift. 

It  was  incredible  to  me  that  even  large  concerns  like 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company  would  not  pay  in  cash  for 
valuable  furs,  and  that  so  many  dealers  in  the  necessities 
of  Hfe  should  be  still  able  to  hold  free  men  in  economic 
bondage.  It  seemed  a  veritable  chapter  from  "Through 
the  Looking  Glass,"  to  hear  the  "grocer"  and  "haber- 
dasher" talking  of  "my  people,"  meaning  their  patrons, 
and  holding  over  them  the  whip  of  refusal  to  sell  them 
necessities  in  their  hour  of  need  if  at  any  time  they  dealt 
with  outsiders,  however  much  to  their  advantage  such  a 
course  might  be. 

This  fact  was  first  impressed  upon  me  in  an  odd  way. 
Early  in  the  summer  an  Eskimo  had  come  aboard  the 
hospital  ship  with  a  bear  skin  and  a  few  other  furs  to  sell. 
We  had  not  only  been  delighted  with  the  chance  to  buy 
them,  but  had  spread  them  all  around  the  cabin  and 


134  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

taken  a  picture  of  him  in  the  middle.  Later  in  the  season, 
while  showing  my  photograph  album  to  a  trader,  he  had 
suddenly  remarked,  "Why,  what's doing  here?" 

"Selling  me  some  beautiful  furs,"  I  replied. 

*'0h!  was  he?"  said  the  man.  "I'll  make  him  sing  for 
selling  the  furs  for  which  I  supplied  him." 

It  was  no  salve  to  his  fretfulness  when  I  assured  him 
that  I  had  paid  in  good  English  gold,  and  that  his 
"dealer"  would  be  as  honest  with  the  money  as  the  sys- 
tem had  made  him.  But  the  trader  knew  that  the  truck 
system  creates  slippery,  tricky  men;  and  the  fisherman 
openly  declares  war  on  the  merchant,  making  the  most 
of  his  few  opportunities  to  outwit  his  opponent. 

A  few  years  later  a  man  brought  a  silver  fox  skin 
aboard  my  ship,  just  such  a  one  as  I  had  been  requested 
by  an  English  lady  to  secure  for  her.  x\s  fulfilling  such 
a  request  would  involve  me  in  hostihties  (which,  how- 
ever, I  do  not  think  were  useless),  I  asked  the  man,  who 
was  wretchedly  poor,  if  he  owed  the  skin  to  the  trader. 

"I  am  in  debt,"  he  replied,  "but  they  will  only  allow 
me  eight  dollars  off  my  account  for  this  skin,  and  I  want 
to  buy  some  food." 

"Very  well,"  I  answered.  "If  you  will  promise  to  go 
at  once  and  pay  eight  dollars  off  your  debt,  I  will  give 
you  eight  gold  sovereigns  for  this  skin." 

To  this  he  agreed,  and  faithfully  carried  out  the  agree- 
ment —  while  the  English  lady  scored  a  bargain,  and  I 
a  very  black  mark  in  the  books  of  my  friend] the  trader. 

On  another  occasion  my  little  steamer  had  tempora- 
rily broken  down,  and  to  save  time  I  had  journeyed  on 
in  the  jolly-boat,  leaving  the  cook  to  steer  the  vessel  after 
me.  I  wanted  to  visit  a  very  poor  family,  one  of  whose 
eight  children  I  had  taken  to  hospital  for  bone  tuber- 
culosis the  previous  year,  and  to  whom  the  Mission  had 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         135 

made  a  liberal  grant  of  warm  clothing.  As  the  steamer 
had  not  come  along  by  night,  I  had  to  sleep  in  the  tiny 
one-roomed  shack  which  served  as  a  home.  True,  since 
it  stood  on  the  edge  of  the  forest,  there  was  httle  excuse 
that  it  was  no  larger;  but  the  father,  a  most  excellent, 
honest,  and  faithful  worker,  was  obviously  discouraged. 
He  had  not  nearly  enough  proper  food  for  his  family; 
clothing  was  even  more  at  a  discount;  tools  with  which 
to  work  were  almost  as  lacking  as  in  a  cave  man's  dwell- 
ing; the  whole  family  was  going  to  pieces  from  sheer  dis- 
couragement. The  previous  winter  on  the  opposite  bank 
of  the  same  river,  called  Big  River,  a  neighbour  had  in 
desperation  sent' his  wife  and  eldest  boy  out  of  the  house, 
killed  his  young  family,  and  then  shot  himself. 

When  night  came  five  of  the  children  huddled  together 
for  warmth  in  one  bed,  and  the  parents  and  balance  of 
the  family  in  the  other.  I  slept  on  the  floor  near  the  door 
in  my  sleeping-bag,  with  my  nose  glued  to  the  crack  to 
get  a  breath  of  God's  cold  air,  in  spite  of  the  need  for 
warmth  —  for  not  a  blanket  did  the  house  possess.  When 
I  asked,  a  little  hurt,  where  were  the  blankets  which  we 
had  sent  last  year,  the  mother  somewhat  indignantly 
pointed  to  various  trousers  and  coats  which  betrayed  their 
final  resting-place,  and  remarked,  "If  you'se  had  five  lads 
all  trying  to  get  under  one  covering  to  onct,  Doctor,  you  'd 
soon  know  what  would  happen  to  that  blanket." 

Early  in  the  morning  I  made  a  boiling  of  cocoa,  and 
took  the  two  elder  boys  out  for  a  seal  hunt  while  waiting 
for  my  steamer.  I  was  just  in  time  to  see  one  boy  carefully 
upset  his  mug  of  cocoa,  when  he  thought  I  was  not  look- 
ing, and  replace  it  with  cold  spring  water.  "I  'lows  I'se 
not  accustomed  to  no  sweetness"  was  his  simple  ex- 
planation. It  was  raw  and  damp  as  we  rowed  into  the 
estuary  at  sunrise  in  search  of  the  seals.  I  was  chilly  even 


136  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

in  a  well-lined  leather  coat.  But  the  two  shock-headed 
boys,  clad  in  ancient  cotton  shirts,  and  with  what  had 
once  been  only  cotton  overall  jackets,  were  as  jolly  as 
crickets,  and  apparently  almost  unduly  warm.  The 
Labrador  has  taught  me  one  truth,  which  as  a  physician 
I  never  forget,  that  is,  coddhng  is  the  terrible  menace  of 
civilization,  and  "to  endure  hardness"  is  the  best  prep- 
aration for  a  "good  soldier."  On  leaving,  I  promised  to 
send  to  those  boys,  whose  contentment  and  cheerfulness 
greatly  endeared  them  to  me,  a  dozen  good  fox  traps  in 
order  to  give  them  a  chance  for  the  coming  winter.  Such 
a  gift  as  those  old  iron  rat  traps  seemed  in  their  eyes! 
When  at  last  they  arrived,  and  were  really  their  own 
possessions,  no  prince  could  have  been  prouder  than 
they.  The  next  summer  as  I  steamed  North,  we  called  in 

at  D B 's  house.  The  same  famine  in  the  land 

seemed  to  prevail;  the  same  lack  of  apparently  every- 
thing which  I  should  have  wanted.  But  the  old  infective 
smile  was  still  presented  with  an  almost  religious  cere- 
monial, and  my  friend  produced  from  his  box  a  real 
silver  fox  skin.  "I  kept  it  for  you'se.  Doctor,"  he  said, 
"though  us  hadn't  ne'er  a  bit  int'  house.  I  know'd 
you'd  do  better  'n  we  with  he." 

I  promised  to  try,  and  on  my  way  called  in  at  some 
northern  islands  where  my  friend.  Captain  Bartlett, 
father  of  the  celebrated  "  Captain  Bob  "  of  North  Pole 
fame,  carried  on  a  summer  trade  and  fishery.  He  himself 
was  a  great  seal  and  cod  fisherman,  and  a  man  known 
for  his  generous  sympathy  for  others. 

"Do  your  best  for  me.  Captain  Will,"  I  asked  as  I 
handed  over  the  skin  —  and  on  coming  South  I  found  a 

complete  winter  diet  laid  out  for  me  to  take  to  D 

B 's  little  house.  It  was  a  veritable  full  load  for  the 

small  carrying  capacity  of  my  Httle  craft. 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  LABRADOR         137 

When  we  arrived  at  tlie  house  on  the  promontory, 
however,  it  was  locked  up  and  the  family  gone.  They 
were  off  fishing  on  the  outer  islands,  so  all  we  could  do 
was  to  break  in  the  door,  pile  up  the  things  inside,  bar 
it  up  again,  aflSxing  a  notice  warning  off  bears,  dogs, 
and  all  poachers,  and  advising  Dick  that  it  was  the  price 
of  his  pelt.  In  the  note  we  also  told  him  to  put  all  the 
fur  he  caught  the  following  winter  in  a  barrel  and  "sit 
on  it"  till  we  came  along,  if  he  wanted  a  chance  to  get 
ahead.  This  he  did  almost  literally.  We  ourselves  took 
his  barrel  to  the  nearest  cash  buyer,  and  ordered  for  him 
goods  for  cash  in  St.  John's  to  the  full  amount  realized. 
The  fur  brought  more  than  his  needs,  and  he  was  able  to 
help  out  neighbours  by  reselling  at  cash  prices.  This  he 
did  till  the  day  of  his  death,  when  he  left  me,  as  his  ex- 
ecutor, with  a  couple  of  hundred  good  dollars  in  cash  to 
divide  among  his  children. 

It  was  experiments  like  this  which  led  me  in  later  years 
to  start  the  small  cooperative  distributive  stores,  in  spite 
of  the  knowledge  of  the  opposition  and  criticism  it  would 
involve.  How  can  one  preach  the  gospel  of  love  to  a 
hungry  people  by  sermons,  or  a  gospel  of  healing  to  under- 
fed children  by  pills,  while  one  feels  that  practical  teach- 
ing in  home  economics  is  what  one  would  most  wish  if  in 
their  position.'^  The  more  broad-minded  critics  them- 
selves privately  acknowledged  this  to  me.  One  day  a 
Northern  furrier,  an  excellent  and  more  intelligent  man 
than  ordinary,  came  to  me  as  a  magistrate  to  insist  that 
a  trading  company  keep  its  bargain  by  paying  him  in 
cash  for  a  valuable  fox  skin.  They  were  trying  to  compel 
him  to  take  flour  and  supplies  from  them  at  prices  far  in 
excess  of  those  at  which  he  could  purchase  the  goods  in 
St.  John's,  via  the  mail  steamer. 

"When  asked  to  act  as  a  justice  of  the  peace  for  the 


138  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Colony,  I  had  thought  it  my  duty  to  accept  the  respon- 
sibiKty.  Already  it  had  led  me  into  a  good  deal  of  trouble. 
But  that  I  should  be  forced  to  seize  the  large  store  of  a 
company,  and  threaten  an  auction  of  goods  for  payment, 
without  even  a  policeman  to  back  me  up,  had  never 
entered  my  mind.  It  was,  however,  exactly  what  I  now 
felt  called  upon  to  do.  To  my  intense  surprise  and  satis- 
faction the  trader  immediately  turned  round  and  said: 
"You  are  quite  right.  The  money  shall  be  paid  at  once. 
The  truck  system  is  a  mistaken  policy,  and  loses  us  many 
customers."  It  was  Saturday  night.  We  had  decided  to 
have  a  service  for  the  fishermen  the  next  day,  but  had 
no  place  in  which  to  gather.  Therefore,  after  we  had 
settled  the  business  I  took  my  pluck  in  my  hands,  and 
said: 

"It's  Sunday  to-morrow.  Would  you  lend  us  your  big 
room  for  prayers  in  the  morning?" 

"Why,  certainly,"  he  replied;  and  he  was  present 
himself  and  sang  as  heartily  as  any  man  in  the  meeting. 
Nor  did  he  lose  a  good  customer  on  account  of  his  open- 
mindedness. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR 

Since  the  publication  of  the  book  "Labrador,  the  Coun- 
try and  the  People,"  the  means  of  transportation  to  the 
coast  have  been  so  improved  that  each  year  brings  us 
an  increasing  number  of  visitors  to  enjoy  the  attractions 
of  this  sub-arctic  land.  So  many  misconceptions  have 
arisen,  however,  as  to  the  country  and  its  inhabitants, 
and  one  is  so  often  misrepresented  as  distorting  condi- 
tions, that  it  seems  wise  at  this  point  to  try  and  answer 
a  few  questions  which  are  so  familiar  to  us  who  live  on 
the  coast  as  to  appear  almost  negligible. 

The  east  coast  of  Labrador  belongs  to  Newfoundland, 
and  is  not  part  of  the  territory  of  Canada,  although  the 
ill-defined  boundary  between  the  two  possessions  has 
given  rise  to  many  misunderstandings.  Newfoimdland  is 
an  autonomous  government,  having  its  own  Governor 
sent  out  from  England,  Prime  Minister,  and  Houses  of 
Parliament  in  the  city  of  St.  John's.  Instead  of  being  a 
province  of  Canada,  as  is  often  supposed,  and  an  arrange- 
ment which  some  of  us  firmly  believe  would  result  in  the 
ultimate  good  of  the  Newfoundlanders,  it  stands  in  the 
same  relationship  to  England  as  does  the  great  Dominion 
herself.  Labrador  is  owned  by  Newfoundland,  so  that 
legally  the  Labradormen  are  Newfoundlanders,  though 
they  have  no  representation  in  the  Newfoundland  Gov- 
ernment. At  Blanc  Sablon,  on  the  north  coast  in  the 
Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  the  Canadian  Labrador  begins,  so 
far  as  the  coast-line  is  concerned.  The  hinterland  of  the 
Province  of  Ungava  is  also  a  Canadian  possession. 

The  original  natives  of  the  Labrador  were  Eskimos 


140  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  bands  of  roving  Indians.  The  etlinologist  would  find 
fruitful  opportunities  in  the  country.  The  Eskimos,  one 
of  the  most  interesting  of  primitive  races,  have  still  a 
firm  foothold  in  the  North  —  chiefly  around  the  five 
stations  of  the  Moravian  Brethren,  upon  whose  heroic 
work  I  need  not  now  dilate.  The  Montaignais  Indians 
roam  the  interior.  They  are  a  branch  of  the  ancient 
Algonquin  race  who  held  North  America  as  far  west  as 
the  Rockies.  They  are  the  hereditary  foes  of  the  Eskimos, 
whole  settlements  of  whom  they  have  more  than  once 
exterminated.  Gradually,  with  the  influx  of  white  settlers 
from  Devon  and  Dorset,  from  Scotland  and  France,  the 
"Innuits"  were  driven  farther  and  farther  north,  until 
there  are  only  some  fifteen  hundred  of  them  remaining 
to-day.  Among  them  the  Moravians  have  been  working 
for  the  past  hundred  and  thirty-five  years.  A  few  bands 
of  Indians  still  continue  to  rove  the  interior,  occasionally 
coming  out  to  the  coast  to  dispose  of  their  furs,  and  ob- 
tain such  meagre  supplies  as  their  mode  of  life  requires. 
The  balance  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  coimtry  are  white 
men  of  our  own  blood  and  religion  —  men  of  the  sea  and 
dear  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  heart. 

During  the  past  years  it  has  been  the  experience  of 
many  of  my  colleagues,  as  well  as  myself,  that  as  soon  as 
one  mentions  the  fact  that  part  of  our  work  is  done  on 
the  north  shore  of  Newfoundland,  one's  audience  loses 
interest,  and  there  arises  the  question:  "But  Newfound- 
land is  a  prosperous  island.  Why  is  it  necessary  to  carry 
on  a  charitable  enterprise  there .f^'* 

There  is  a  sharp  demarcation  between  main  or  south- 
ern Newfoundland  and  the  long  finger  of  land  jutting 
northward,  which  at  Cape  Bauld  sphts  the  polar  current, 
so  that  the  shores  of  the  narrow  peninsula  are  contin- 
uously bathed  in  icy  waters.  The  country  is  swept  by 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  141 

biting  winds,  and  often  for  weeks  enveloped  in  a  chilly 
and  dripping  blanket  of  fog.  The  climate  at  the  north  end 
of  the  northward-pointing  finger  is  more  severe  than  on 
the  Labrador  side  of  the  Straits.  Indeed,  my  friend,  Mr. 
George  Ford,  for  twenty-seven  years  factor  of  the  Hudson 
Ba,y  Company  at  Nakvak,  told  me  that  even  in  the  ex- 
treme north  of  Labrador  he  never  really  knew  what  cold 
was  mitil  he  underwent  the  penetrating  experience  of  a 
winter  at  St.  Anthony.  The  Lapp  reindeer  herders  whom 
we  brought  over  from  Lapland,  a  country  lying  well 
north  of  the  Arctic  Circle,  after  spending  a  winter  near 
St.  Anthony,  told  me  that  they  had  never  felt  anything 
like  that  kind  of  cold,  and  that  they  really  could  not  put 
up  with  it!  The  climate  of  the  actual  Labrador  is  clear, 
cold,  and  still,  with  a  greater  proportion  of  sunshine  than 
the  northern  peninsula  of  Newfoundland.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  our  station  at  St.  Anthony  is  farther  north  and 
farther  east  than  two  of  our  hospitals  on  the  Labrador 
side  of  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle.  Along  that  north  side  the 
gardens  of  the  people  are  so  good  that  their  produce 
affords  a  valuable  addition  to  the  diet  —  but  not  so  here. 
The  dominant  industry  of  the  whole  Colony  is  its  fish- 
eries —  the  ever-recurrent  pursuit  of  the  luckless  cod, 
salmon,  herring,  halibut,  and  lobster  in  summer,  and  the 
seal  fishery  in  the  month  of  March.  It  is  increasingly  dif- 
ficult to  overestimate  the  importance,  not  merely  to  the 
British  Empire,  but  to  the  entire  world,  of  the  invaluable 
food-supply  procured  by  the  hardy  fishermen  of  these 
northern  waters.  Only  the  other  day  the  captain  of  a 
patrol  boat  told  me  that  he  had  just  come  over  from 
service  on  the  North  Sea,  and  in  his  opinion  it  would  be 
years  before  those  waters  could  again  be  fished,  owing  to 
the  immense  numbers  of  still  active  mines  which  would 
reniier  such  an  attempt  disproportionately  hazardous. 


142  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

From  this  point  of  view,  if  from  no  other  more  disinter- 
ested angle,  we  owe  a  great  and  continuous  debt  to  the 
splendid  people  of  Britain's  oldest  colony.  It  was  among 
these  white  fishermen  that  I  came  out  to  work  primarily, 
the  floating  population  which  every  summer,  some  twenty 
thousand  strong,  visits  the  coasts  of  Labrador;  and  later 
including  the  white  resident  settlers  of  the  Labrador  and 
North  Newfoundland  coasts  as  well. 

The  conditions  prevailing  among  some  of  the  people 
at  the  north  end  of  Newfoundland  and  of  Labrador  itself 
should  not  be  confused  with  those  of  their  neighbours  to 
the  southward.  Chronic  poverty  is,  however,  very  far 
from  being  universally  prevalent  in  the  northern  district. 
Some  of  the  fishermen  lead  a  comfortable,  happy,  and 
prosperous  life;  but  my  old  diaries,  as  well  as  my  present 
observations,  furnish  all  too  many  instances  in  which 
families  exist  well  within  the  danger-line  of  poverty, 
ignorance,  and  starvation. 

The  privations  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  French  or 
Treaty  shore  and  of  Labrador  have  had  to  undergo,  and 
their  isolation  from  so  many  of  the  benefits  of  civilization, 
have  had  varying  effects  on  the  residents  of  the  coast  to- 
day. While  a  resourceful  and  kindly,  hardy  and  hospitable 
people  have  been  developed,  yet  one  sometimes  wonders 
exactly  into  what  era  an  inhabitant  of  say  the  planet 
Mars  would  place  our  section  of  the  North  Country  if  he 
were  to  alight  here  some  crisp  morning  in  one  of  his  un- 
earthly machines.  For  we  are  a  reactionary  people  in 
matters  of  religion  and  education;  and  our  very  "speech 
betrays  us,"  belonging  as  so  many  of  its  expressions  do 
to  the  days  when  the  Pilgrims  went  up  to  Canterbury, 
or  a  certain  Tinker  wrote  of  another  and  more  distant 
pilgrimage  to  the  City  of  Zion. 

The  people  are,  naturally.  Christians  of  a  devout  and 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  143 

simple  faith.  The  superstitions  still  found  among  them 
are  attributable  to  the  remoteness  of  the  country  from 
the  current  of  the  world's  thought,  the  natural  tendency 
of  all  seafaring  people,  and  the  fact  that  the  days  when 
the  forbears  of  these  fishermen  left  "Merrie  England" 
to  seek  a  living  by  the  harvest  of  the  sea,  and  finally  set- 
tled on  these  rocky  shores,  were  those  when  witches 
and  hobgoblins  and  charms  and  amulets  were  accepted 
beliefs. 

Nevertheless,  to-day  as  a  medical  man  one  is  startled 
to  see  a  fox's  or  wolf's  head  suspended  by  a  cord  from 
the  centre,  and  to  learn  that  it  will  always  twist  the  way 
from  which  the  wind  is  going  to  blow.  One  man  had  a 
barometer  of  this  kind  hanging  from  his  roof,  and  ex- 
plained that  the  peculiar  fact  was  due  to  the  nature  of 
the  animals,  which  in  life  always  went  to  windward  of 
others;  but  if  you  had  a  seal's  head  similarly  suspended, 
it  would  turn  from  the  wind,  owing  to  the  timid  character 
of  that  creature.  Moreover,  it  surprises  one  to  be  assured, 
on  the  irrefutable  and  quite  unquestioned  authority  of 
"old  Aunt  Anne  Sweetapple,"  that  aged  cats  always 
become  playful  before  a  gale  of  wind  comes  on. 

"I  never  gets  sea  boils,"  one  old  chap  told  me  the 
other  day. 

"How  is  that?"  I  asked. 

"Oh!  I  always  cuts  my  nails  on  a  Monday,  so  I  never 
has  any." 

There  is  a  great  belief  in  fairies  on  the  coast.  A  man 
came  to  me  once  to  cure  what  he  was  determined  to  be- 
lieve was  a  balsam  on  his  baby's  nose.  The  birthmark  to 
him  resembled  that  tree.  More  than  one  had  given  cur- 
rency if  not  credence  to  the  belief  that  the  reason  why 
the  bull's-eye  was  so  hard  to  hit  in  one  of  our  running 
deer  rifle  matches  was  that  we  had  previously  charmed 


144  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

it.  If  a  woman  sees  a  hare  without  cutting  out  and  keep- 
ing a  portion  of  the  dress  she  is  then  wearing,  her  child 
will  be  born  with  a  hare-lip. 

When  stripping  a  patient  for  examination,  I  noticed 
that  he  removed  from  his  neck  what  appeared  to  be  a 
very  large  scapular.  I  asked  him  what  it  could  be.  It  was 
a  haddock's  jfin-bone  —  a  charm  against  rheumatism. 
The  peculiarity  of  the  fin  consists  in  the  fact  that  the  fish 
must  be  taken  from  the  water  and  the  fin  cut  out  before 
the  animal  touches  anything  whatever,  especially  the 
boat.  Any  one  who  has  seen  a  trawl  hauled  knows  how 
difficult  a  task  this  would  be,  with  the  jumping,  squirm- 
ing fish  to  cope  with. 

Protestant  and  Catholic  alike  often  sew  up  bits  of 
paper,  with  prayers  written  on  them,  in  little  sacks  that 
are  worn  around  the  neck  as  an  amulet;  and  green 
worsted  tied  around  the  wrist  is  reported  to  be  a  never- 
failing  cure  for  hemorrhage. 

Every  summer  some  twenty  thousand  fishermen  travel 
"down  North"  in  schooners,  as  soon  as  ever  the  ice 
breaks  sufficiently  to  allow  them  to  get  along.  They  are 
the  "  Labrador  fishermen,"  and  they  come  from  South 
Newfoundland,  from  Nova  Scotia,  from  Gloucester,  and 
even  Boston.  Some  Newfoundlanders  take  their  families 
down  and  leave  them  in  summer  tilts  on  the  land  near  the 
fishing  grounds  during  the  season.  When  fall  comes  they 
pick  them  up  again  and  start  for  their  winter  homes 
"in  the  South,"  leaving  only  a  few  hundreds  of  scattered 
"Liveyeres"  in  possession  of  the  Labrador. 

We  were  much  surprised  one  day  to  notice  a  family 
moving  their  house  in  the  middle  of  the  fishing  season, 
especially  when  we  learned  that  the  reason  was  tha4:  a 
spirit  had  appropriated  their  dwelling. 
,    Stephen  Leacock  would  have  obtained  much  valu^l)le 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR     145 

data  for  his  essay  on  "How  to  Become  a  Doctor"  if  he 
had  ever  chanced  to  sail  along  "the  lonely  Labrador." 
In  a  certain  village  one  is  confidently  told  of  a  cure  for 
asthma,  as  simple  as  it  is  infallible.  It  consists  merely  of 
taking  the  tips  of  all  one's  finger-nails,  carefully  allowed 
to  grow  long,  and  cutting  them  off  with  sharp  scissors. 
In  another  section  a  powder  known  as  "Dragon's 
Blood"  is  very  generally  used  as  a  plaster.  It  appears 
quite  inert  and  harmless.  A  little  farther  south  along  the 
coast  is  a  baby  suffering  from  ophthalmia.  The  doctor 
has  only  been  called  in  because  blowing  sugar  in  its  eyes 
has  failed  to  cure  it. 

A  colleague  of  mine  was  visiting  on  his  winter  rounds 
in  a  delightful  village  some  forty  miles  south  of  St. 
Anthony  Hospital.  The  "swiles"  (seals)  had  struck  in, 
and  all  hands  were  out  on  the  ice,  eager  to  capture  their 
share  of  these  valuable  animals.  But  snow-blindness  had 
incontinently  attacked  the  men,  and  had  rendered  them 
utterly  unable  to  profit  by  their  good  fortune.  The  doc- 
tor's clinic  was  long  and  busy  that  night.  The  following 
morning  he  was,  however,  amazed  to  see  many  of  his 
erstwhile  patients  wending  their  way  seawards,  each 
with  one  eye  treated  on  his  prescription,  but  the  other 
(for  safety's  sake)  doctored  after  the  long-accepted 
methods  of  the  talent  of  the  village  —  tansy  poultices 
and  sugar  being  the  acknowledged  favourites.  The  con- 
sensus of  opinion  obviously  was  that  the  stakes  were  too 
high  for  a  man  to  offer  up  both  eyes  on  the  altar  of 
modern  medicine. 

In  the  course  of  many  years'  practice  the  methods  for 
the  treatment  and  extraction  of  offending  molars  which 
have  come  to  my  attention  are  numerous,  but  none  can 
claim  a*more  prompt  result  than  the  following:  First  you 
attach  a  stout,  fine  fish-line  firmly  to  the  tooth.  Next 


146  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

you  lash  the  other  end  to  the  latch  of  the  door  —  we  do 
not  use  knobs  m  this  country.  You  then  make  the  patient 
stand  back  till  there  is  a  nice  tension  on  the  line,  when 
suddenly  you  make  a  feint  as  if  to  strike  him  in  the  eye. 
Forgetful  of  the  line,  he  leaps  back  to  avoid  the  blow. 
Result,  painless  extraction  of  the  tooth,  which  should  be 
found  hanging  to  the  latch. 

Although  there  have  been  clergyman  of  the  Church  of 
England  and  Methodist  denominations  on  the  coast  for 
many  years  past  —  devoted  and  self-sacrificing  men  who 
have  done  most  unselfish  work  —  still,  their  visits  must 
be  infrequent.  One  of  them  told  me  in  North  Newfound- 
land that  once,  when  he  happened  to  pass  through  a 
little  village  with  his  dog  team  on  his  way  South,  the  man 
of  one  house  ran  out  and  asked  him  to  come  in.  "Sorry 
I  have  no  time,"  he  replied.  "Well,  just  come  in  at  the 
front  door  and  out  at  the  back,  so  we  can  say  that  a 
minister  has  been  in  the  house,"  the  fisherman  answered. 

Even  to-day,  to  the  least  fastidious,  the  conditions  of 
travel  leave  much  to  be  desired.  The  coastal  steamers 
are  packed  far  beyond  their  sleeping  or  sitting  capacity. 
On  the  upper  deck  of  the  best  of  these  boats  I  recall  that 
there  are  two  benches,  each  to  accommodate  four  people. 
The  steamer  often  carries  three  hundred  in  the  crowded 
season  of  the  fall  of  the  year.  One  retires  at  night  under 
the  misapprehension  that  the  following  morning  will  find 
these  seats  still  available.  On  ascending  the  companion- 
way,  however,  one's  gaze  is  met  by  a  heterogeneous  col- 
lection of  impedimenta.  The  benches  are  buried  as  ir- 
retrievably as  if  they  "had  been  carried  into  the  midst 
of  the  sea."  Almost  anything  may  have  been  piled  on 
them,  from  bales  of  hay  —  among  which  my  wife  once 
sat  for  two  days  —  to  the  nucleus  of  a  chicken  farm,  des- 
tined, let  us  say,  for  the  Rogues'  Roost  Bight. 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  147 

As  the  sturdy  little  steamer  noses  her  way  into  some 
picturesque  harbour  and  blows  a  lusty  warning  of  her 
approach,  small  boats  are  seen  putting  off  from  the  shore 
and  rowing  or  sculling  toward  her  with  almost  indecorous 
rapidity.  Lean  over  the  rail  for  a  minute  with  me,  and 
watch  the  freight  being  unloaded  into  one  of  these  bob- 
bing little  craft.  The  hatch  of  the  steamer  is  opened,  a 
most  unmusical  winch  commences  operations  —  and  a 
sewing  machine  emerges  de  profundis.  This  is  swung 
giddily  out  over  the  sea  by  the  crane  and  dropped  on  the 
thwarts  of  the  waiting  punt.  One  shudders  to  think  of 
the  probably  fatal  shock  received  by  the  vertebrae  of  that 
machine.  One's  sympathies,  however,  are  almost  imme- 
diately enlisted  in  the  interest  and  fortunes  of  a  young 
and  voiceful  pig,  which,  poised  in  the  blue,  unwillingly 
experiences  for  the  moment  the  fate  of  the  coflSn  of  the 
Prophet.  Great  shouting  ensues  as  a  baby  is  carried  down 
the  ship's  ladder  and  deposited  in  the  rocking  boat.  A 
bag  of  beans,  of  the  variety  known  as  "haricot,"  is  the 
next  candidate.  A  small  hole  has  been  torn  in  a  comer  of 
the  burlap  sack,  out  of  which  trickles  a  white  and  omin- 
ous stream.  The  last  article  to  join  the  galaxy  is  a  tub  of 
butter.  By  a  slight  mischance  the  tub  has  "  burst  abroad," 
and  the  butter,  a  golden  and  gleaming  mass,  —  with  un- 
expected consideration  having  escaped  the  ministrations 
of  the  winch,  —  is  passed  from  one  pair  of  fishy  hands 
to  another,  till  it  finds  a  resting-place  by  the  side  of  the 
now  quiescent  pig. 

We  pass  out  into  the  open  again,  bound  for  the  next 
port  of  call.  If  the  weather  chances  to  be  "dirty,"  the 
sufferers  from  mal-de-mer  lie  about  on  every  available 
spot,  be  it  floor  or  bench,  and  over  these  prostrate  forms 
must  one  jump  as  one  descends  to  the  dining-saloon  for 
lunch.  It  may  be  merely  due  to  the  special  keenness  of 


148  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

my  professional  sense,  but  the  apparent  proportion  of 
the  halt,  lame,  and  blind  who  frequent  these  steamers 
appears  out  of  all  relation  to  the  total  population  of  the 
coast.  Across  the  table  is  a  man  with  an  enormous  white 
rag  swathing  his  thumb.  The  woman  next  him  looks  out 
on  a  blue  and  altered  world  from  behind  a  bandaged  eye. 
Beside  one  sits  a  young  iBsherman,  tenderly  nursing  his 
left  lower  jaw,  his  enjoyment  of  the  fact  that  his  appetite 
is  unimpaired  by  the  vagaries  of  the  North  Atlantic 
tempered  by  an  unremitting  toothache. 

But  the  cheerful  kindliness  and  capability  of  the  cap- 
tain, the  crew,  and  the  passengers,  on  whatever  boat  you 
may  chance  to  travel,  pervades  the  whole  ship  like  an 
atmosphere,  and  makes  one  forget  any  slight  discomfort 
in  a  justifiable  pride  that  as  an  Anglo-Saxon  one  can 
claim  kinship  to  these  "Vikings  of  to-day." 

Life  is  hard  in  White  Bay.  An  outsider  visiting  there  in 
the  spring  of  the  year  would  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
if  nothing  further  can  be  done  for  these  people  to  make 
a  more  generous  living,  they  should  be  encouraged  to  go 
elsewhere.  The  number  of  cases  of  tubercle,  ansemia,  and 
dyspepsia,  of  beri-beri  and  scurvy,  all  largely  attribut- 
able to  poverty  of  diet,  is  very  great;  and  the  relative 
poverty,  even  compared  with  that  of  the  countries 
which  I  have  been  privileged  to  visit,  is  piteous.  The  so- 
lution of  such  a  problem  does  not,  however,  lie  in  re- 
moving a  people  from  their  environment,  but  in  trying 
to  make  the  environment  more  fit  for  human  habitation. 

The  hospitality  of  the  people  is  unstinted  and  beauti- 
ful. They  will  turn  out  of  their  beds  at  any  time  to  make 
a  stranger  comfortable,  and  offer  him  their  last  crust  into 
the  bargain,  without  ever  expecting  or  asking  a  penny  of 
recompense.  But  here,  as  all  the  world  over,  the  sublime 
and  the  ridiculous  go  hand  in  hand.  On  one  of  my  dog 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  149 

trips  the  first  winter  which  I  spent  at  St.  Anthony,  the 
bench  on  which  I  slept  was  the  top  of  the  box  used  for 
hens.  This  would  have  made  little  diflFerence  to  me,  but 
unfortunately  it  contained  a  youthful  and  vigorous 
rooster,  which,  mistaking  the  arrival  of  so  many  visitors 
for  some  strange  herald  of  morning,  proceeded  every 
half-hour  to  salute  it  with  premature  and  misdirected 
zeal,  utterly  incompatible  with  unbroken  repose  just 
above  his  head.  It  was  possible,  without  moving  one's 
limbs  much,  to  reach  through  the  bars  and  suggest  bet- 
ter things  to  him;  but  owing  to  the  inequality  which 
exists  in  most  things,  one  invariably  captured  a  drowsy 
hen,  while  the  more  active  offender  eluded  one  with 
ease.  Lighting  matches  to  differentiate  species  under  such 
exceptional  circumstances  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge 
was  quite  out  of  the  question. 

A  visit  to  one  house  on  the  French  shore  I  shall  not 
easily  forget.  The  poor  lad  of  sixteen  years  had  hip  dis- 
ease, and  lay  dying.  The  indescribable  dirt  I  cannot  here 
picture.  The  bed,  the  house,  and  everything  in  it  were 
full  of  vermin,  and  the  poor  boy  had  not  been  washed 
since  he  took  to  bed  three  or  four  months  before.  With 
the  help  of  a  clergyman  who  was  travelling  with  me 
at  the  time,  the  lad  was  chloroformed  and  washed.  We 
then  ordered  the  bedding  to  be  burned,  provided  him 
with  fresh  garments,  and  put  him  into  a  clean  bed.  The 
people's  explanation  was  that  he  was  in  too  much  pain 
to  be  touched,  and  so  they  could  do  nothing.  We 
cleansed  and  drained  his  wounds  and  left  what  we  could 
for  him.  Had  he  not  been  so  far  gone,  we  should  have 
taken  him  to  the  hospital,  but  I  feared  that  he  would 
not  survive  the  journey. 

Although  at  the  time  it  often  seemed  an  unnecessary 
e3q)enditure  of  effort  in  an  already  overcrowded  day. 


150  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

one  now  values  the  records  of  the  early  days  of  one's 
life  on  the  coast.  In  my  notebook  for  1895  I  find  the 
following:  "The  desolation  of  Labrador  at  this  time 
is  easy  to  miderstand.  No  Newfoundlanders  were  left 
north  of  us;  not  a  vessel  in  sight  anywhere.  The 
ground  was  all  under  snow,  and  everything  caught  over 
with  ice  except  the  sea.  I  think  that  I  must  describe 
one  house,  for  it  seems  a  marvel  that  any  man  could 
live  in  it  all  winter,  much  less  women  and  children. 
It  was  ten  feet  by  twenty,  one  storey  high,  made  of  mud 
and  boards,  with  half  a  partition  to  divide  bedroom 
from  the  sitting-room  kitchen.  If  one  adds  a  small 
porch  filled  with  dirty,  half-starved  dogs,  and  refuse 
of  every  kind,  an  ancient  and  dilapidated  stove  in  the 
sitting  part  of  the  house,  two  wooden  benches  against 
the  walls,  a  fixed  rude  table,  some  shelves  nailed  to  the 
wall,  and  two  boarded-up  beds,  one  has  a  fairly  accu- 
rate description  of  the  furnishings.  Inside  were  four- 
teen persons,  sleeping  there,  at  any  rate  for  a  night  or 
two.  The  ordinary  regular  family  of  a  man  and  wife  and 
four  girls  was  to  be  increased  this  winter  by  the  man's 
brother,  his  wife,  and  four  boys  from  twelve  months  to 
seven  years  of  age.  His  brother  had  'handy  enough 
flour,'  but  no  tea  or  molasses.  The  owner  was  looking 
after  Newfoundland  Rooms,  for  which  he  got  flour,  tea, 
molasses,  and  firewood  for  the  winter.  The  people  as- 
sure me  that  one  man,  who  was  aboard  us  last  fall  just 
as  we  were  going  South,  starved  to  death,  and  many 
more  were  just  able  to  hold  out  till  spring.  The  man, 
they  tell  me,  ate  his  only  dog  as  his  last  resource." 

I  sent  one  day  a  barrel  of  flour  and  some  molasses 
to  a  poor  widow  with  seven  children  at  Stag  Islands. 
She  was  starving  even  in  summer.  She  was  just  eating 
fish,  which  she  and  her  eldest  girl  caught,  and  drinking 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  151 

water  —  no  flour,  no  tea,  nothing.  Two  winters  be- 
fore she  and  her  eldest  girl  sawed  up  three  thousand 
feet  of  planking  to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  little  ones. 
The  girl  managed  the  boat  and  fished  in  summer,  drove 
the  dogs  and  komatik  and  did  the  shooting  for  which 
they  could  afford  powder  in  winter. 

A  man,  having  failed  to  catch  a  single  salmon  be- 
yond what  he  was  forced  to  eat,  left  in  his  little  boat 
to  row  down  to  the  Inlet  to  try  for  codfish.  To  get  a 
meal  —  breakfast  —  and  a  little  flour  to  sustain  life 
on  the  way,  he  had  to  sell  his  anchor  before  he  left. 

The  life  of  the  sea,  with  all  its  attractions,  is  at  best 
a  hazardous  calling,  and  it  speaks  loud  in  the  praise 
of  the  capacity  and  simple  faith  of  our  people  that 
in  the  midst  of  a  trying  and  often  perilous  environ- 
ment, they  retain  so  quiet  and  kindly  a  temper  of  mind. 
During  my  voyage  to  the  seal  fishery  I  recall  that  one 
day  at  three  o'clock  the  men  were  all  called  in.  Four 
were  missing.  We  did  not  find  them  till  we  had  been 
steaming  for  an  hour  and  a  half.  They  were  caught 
on  pans  some  mile  or  so  apart  in  couples,  and  were  in 
prison.  We  were  a  little  anxious  about  them,  but  the 
only  remark  which  I  heard,  when  at  last  they  came 
aboard,  was,  "Leave  the  key  of  your  box  the  next  time, 
Ned." 

To  those  who  claim  that  Labrador  is  a  land  of  plenty 
I  would  offer  the  following  incident  in  refutation.  At 
Holton  on  a  certain  Sunday  morning  the  leader  of  the 
church  services  came  aboard  the  hospital  steamer  and 
asked  me  for  a  Bible.  Some  sacrilegious  pigs  which 
had  been  brought  down  to  fatten  on  the  fish,  driven 
to  the  verge  of  starvation  by  the  scarcity  of  that  arti- 
cle, had  broken  into  the  church  illicitly  one  night,  and 
not  only  destroyed  the  cloth,  but  had  actually  torn  up 


152  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  eaten  the  Bible.  In  reply  to  inquiry  I  gave  it  as 
my  opinion  that  it  would  be  no  sin  to  eat  the  pork  of 
the  erring  quadrupeds. 

Once  when  I  was  cruising  on  the  North  Labrador 
coast  I  anchored  one  day  between  two  desolate  islands 
some  distance  out  in  the  Atlantic,  a  locality  which 
in  those  days  was  frequented  by  many  fishing  craft. 
My  anchors  were  scarcely  down  when  a  boat  from  a 
small  Welsh  brigantine  came  aboard,  and  asked  me  to 
go  at  once  and  see  a  dying  girl.  She  proved  to  be  the 
only  woman  among  a  host  of  men,  and  was  servant 
in  one  of  the  tiny  summer  fishing  huts,  cooking  and 
mending  for  the  men,  and  helping  with  the  fish  when  re- 
quired. I  found  her  in  a  rude  bunk  in  a  dark  comer 
of  the  shack.  She  was  almost  eighteen,  and  even  by 
the  dim  light  of  my  lantern  and  in  contrast  with  the 
sordid  surroundings,  I  could  see  that  she  was  very 
pretty.  A  brief  examination  convinced  me  that  she  was 
dying.  The  tender-hearted  old  captain,  whose  aid  had 
been  called  in  as  the  only  man  with  a  doctor's  box  and 
therefore  felt  to  be  better  qualified  to  use  it  than 
others,  was  heart-broken.  He  had  pronounced  the  case 
to  be  typhoid,  to  be  dangerous  and  contagious,  and  had 
wisely  ordered  the  fishermen,  who  were  handling  food 
for  human  consumption,  to  leave  him  to  deal  with  the 
case  alone.  He  told  me  at  once  that  he  had  limited 
his  attentions  to  feeding  her,  and  that  though  help- 
less for  over  a  fortnight,  and  at  times  unconscious,  the 
patient  had  not  once  been  washed  or  the  bed  changed. 
The  result,  even  with  my  experience,  appalled  me. 
But  while  there  is  life  in  a  young  patient  there  is  al- 
ways hope,  and  we  at  once  set  to  work  on  our  Augean 
task.  By  the  strangest  coincidence  it  was  an  inky  dark 
night  outside,  with  a  low  fog  hanging  over  the  water. 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR     153 

and  the  big  trap  boat,  with  a  crew  of  some  six  men, 
among  them  the  skipper's  sons,  had  been  missing 
since  morning.  The  skipper  had  stayed  home  out  of 
sympathy  for  his  servant  girl,  and  his  mind  was  torn 
asunder  by  the  anxiety  for  the  girl  and  his  fear  for  his 
boys. 

When  night  fell,  the  old  captain  and  I  were  through 
with  the  hardest  part  of  our  work.  We  had  new  bed- 
ding on  the  bed  and  the  patient  clean  and  sleeping 
quietly.  Still  the  boat  and  its  precious  complement 
did  not  come.  Every  few  minutes  the  skipper  would 
go  out  and  listen,  and  stare  into  the  darkness.  The 
girl's  heart  suddenly  failed,  and  about  midnight  her 
spirit  left  this  world.  The  captain  and  I  decided  that 
the  best  thing  to  do  was  to  burn  everything  —  and  in 
order  to  avoid  publicity  to  do  it  at  once.  So  having 
laboriously  carried  it  all  out  onto  the  edge  of  the  cliff, 
we  set  a  light  to  the  pile  and  were  rewarded  with  a 
bonfire  which  would  have  made  many  a  Guy  Fawkes 
celebration.  Quite  unintentionally  we  were  sending  out 
great  streams  of  light  into  the  darkness  over  the  waters 
away  down  below  us,  and  actually  giving  the  longed-for 
signal  to  the  missing  boat.  Her  crew  worked  their  way 
in  the  fog  to  life  and  safety  by  means  of  the  blazing  and 
poor  discarded  "properties"  of  the  soul  preceding  us  to 
our  last  port. 

Although  our  work  has  laint  almost  entirely  among 
the  white  population  of  the  Labrador  and  North  New- 
foundland coasts,  still  it  has  been  our  privilege  occa- 
sionally to  come  in  contact  with  the  native  races,  and 
to  render  them  such 'services,  medical  or  otherwise,  as 
lay  within  our  power.  Our  doctor  at  Harrington  on  the 
Canadian  Labrador  is  appointed  by  the  Canadian  Gov- 
ernment as  Indian  Agent. 


154  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Once,  when  my  own  boat  was  anchored  in  Davis  In- 
let, a  band  of  roving  Indians  had  come  to  the  post  for 
barter  and  supplies.  Our  steamer  was  a  source  of  great 
interest  to  them.  Our  steam  whistle  they  would  gladly 
have  purchased,  after  they  had  mastered  their  first 
fears.  At  night  we  showed  them  some  distress  rockets 
and  some  red  and  blue  port  flares.  The  way  those  In- 
dians fled  from  the  port  flares  was  really  amusing,  and 
no  one  enjoyed  it  more  than  they  did,  for  the  shouting 
and  laughter,  after  they  had  picked  themselves  out  of 
the  scuppers  where  they  had  been  rolling  on  top  of  one 
another,  wakened  the  very  hills  with  their  echoes.  Next 
morning  one  lonely-looking  brave  came  on  board,  and 
explained  to  me  by  signs  and  grunts  that  during  the 
entertainment  a  white  counter,  or  Hudson  Bay  dollar, 
had  rolled  out  of  the  lining  of  his  hat  into  our  wood- 
pile. An  elaborate  search  failed  to  reveal  its  where- 
abouts, but  as  there  was  no  reason  to  doubt  him,  I 
decided  to  make  up  the  loss  to  him  out  of  our  clothes- 
bag.  Fortunately  a  gorgeous  purple  rowing  blazer  came 
readily  to  hand,  and  with  this  and  a  helmet,  both  of  which 
he  put  on  at  once,  the  poor  fellow  was  more  than  satis- 
fied. Indeed,  on  the  wharf  he  was  the  envy  of  the  whole 
band. 

At  night  they  slept  in  the  bunkhouse,  and  they  pre- 
sented a  sight  which  one  is  not  likely  to  forget  —  es- 
pecially one  lying  on  his  back  on  the  table,  with  his 
arms  extended  and  his  head  hanging  listlessly  over  the 
edge.  One  felt  sorely  tempted  to  put  a  pin  into  him 
to  see  if  he  really  were  alive,  but  we  decided  to  abstain 
for  prudential  reasons. 

We  had  among  the  garments  on  board  three  not  ex- 
actly suited  to  the  white  settlers,  so  I  told  the  agent 
to  let  the  Indians  have  a  rifle  shooting  match  for  them. 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  155 

They  were  a  fox  huntsman's  red  broadcloth  tail-coat, 
with  all  the  glory  of  gilt  buttons,  a  rather  dilapidated 
red  golf  blazer,  and  a  white,  cavalryman's  Eton  coat, 
with  silver  buttons,  and  the  coat-of-arms  on.  Words  fail 
me  to  paint  the  elation  of  the  winner  of  the  fox  hunting 
coat;  while  the  wearer  of  the  cavalry  mess  jacket  was 
not  the  least  bit  daunted  by  the  fact  that  when  he  got 
it  on  he  could  hardly  breathe.  I  must  say  that  he  wore 
it  over  a  deerskin  kossak,  which  is  not  the  custom  of 
cavalrymen,  I  am  led  to  believe. 

The  coast-line  from  Ramah  to  Cape  Chidley  is  just 
under  one  hundred  miles,  and  on  it  live  a  few  scattered 
Eskimo  hunters.  Mr.  Ford  knew  every  one  of  them 
personally,  having  lived  there  twenty-seven  years.  It 
appears  that  a  larger  race  of  Eskimos  called  "Tunits," 
to  whom  the  present  race  were  slaves,  used  to  be  on 
this  section  of  the  coast.  At  Nakvak  there  are  re- 
mains of  them.  In  Hebron,  the  same  year  that  we 
met  the  Indians  at  Davis  Inlet,  we  saw  Pomiuk's 
mother.  Her  name  is  Regina,  and  she  is  now  married 
to  Valentine,  the  king  of  the  Eskimos  there.  I  have 
an  excellent  photograph  of  a  royal  dinner  party,  a  thing 
which  I  never  possessed  before.  The  king  and  queen 
and  a  solitary  courtier  are  seated  on  the  rocks,  gnawing 
contentedly  raw  walrus  bones  —  "ivik"  they  call  it. 

The  Eskimos  one  year  suffered  very  heavily  from  an 
epidemic  of  influenza  —  the  germ  doubtless  imported 
by  some  schooner  from  the  South.  Like  all  primitive 
peoples,  they  had  no  immunity  to  the  disease,  and  the 
suffering  and  mortality  were  very  high.  It  was  a  pa- 
thetic sight  as  the  lighter  received  its  load  of  rude  coflSns 
from  the  wharf,  with  all  the  kindly  little  people  gathered 
to  tow  them  to  their  last  resting-place  in  the  shallow 
sand  at  the  end  of  the  inlet.  The  ten  coffins  in  one 


156  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

grave  seemed  more  the  sequence  of  a  battle  than  of  a 
summer  sickness  in  Labrador.  Certainly  the  hospital 
move  on  the  part  of  the  Moravians  deserved  every  com- 
mendation; though  I  understand  that  at  their  little 
hospital  in  Okkak  they  have  not  always  been  able  to 
have  a  qualified  medical  man  in  residence. 

One  old  man,  a  patient  on  whose  hip  I  had  operated, 
came  and  insisted  that  I  should  examine  the  scars. 
Oddly  enough  during  the  operation  the  Eskimo,  who 
was  the  only  available  person  whom  I  had  been  able 
to  find  to  hold  the  light,  had  fainted,  and  left  me  in 
darkness.  I  had  previously  had  no  idea  that  their 
sensibilities  were  so  akin  to  ourSi 

At  Napatuliarasok  Island  are  some  lovely  specimens 
of  blue  and  green  and  golden  Labradorite,  a  striated 
feldspar  with  a  glorious  sheen.  Nothing  has  ever  really 
been  done  with  this  from  a  commercial  point  of  view; 
moreover,  the  samples  of  gold-bearing  quartz,  of  which 
such  good  hopes  have  been  entertained,  have  so  far  been 
found  wanting  also.  Li  my  opinion  this  is  merely  due 
to  lack  of  persevering  investigation  —  for  one  cannot 
believe  that  this  vast  area  of  land  can  be  utterly  un- 
remunerative. 

On  one  of  the  old  maps  of  Labrador  this  terse  de- 
scription is  written  by  the  cartographer:  "Labrador 
was  discovered  by  the  English.  There  is  nothing  in 
it  of  any  value";  and  another  historian  enlarges  on 
the  theme  in  this  fashion :  "  God  made  the  world  in  five 
days,  made  Labrador  on  the  sixth,  and  spent  the  sev- 
enth throwing  stones  at  it."  It  is  so  near  and  yet  so 
far,  so  large  a  section  of  the  British  Empire  and  yet 
so  little  known,  and  so  romantic  for  its  wild  grandeur, 
and  many  fastnesses  still  untrodden  by  the  foot  of 
man!   The  polar   current  steals   from   the   imknown 


THE  PEOPLE  OF  LABRADOR  157 

North  its  ice  treasures,  and  lends  them  with  no  nig- 
gard hand  to  this  seaboard.  There  is  a  never-wearying 
charm  in  these  countless  icebergs,  so  stately  in  size 
and  so  fantastic  in  shape  and  colouring. 

The  fauna  and  flora  of  the  country  are  so  varied 
and  exquisite  that  one  wonders  why  the  world  of  science 
has  so  largely  passed  us  by.  Perhaps  with  the  advent 
of  hydroplanes,  Labrador  will  come  to  its  own  among 
the  countries  of  the  world.  Not  only  the  ethnologist 
and  botanist,  but  the  archaeologist  as  well  reaps  a  rich 
harvest  for  his  labours  here.  Many  relics  of  a  recent 
stone  age  still  exist.  I  have  had  brought  to  me  stone 
saucepans,  lamps,  knives,  arrow-heads,  etc.,  taken  from 
old  graves.  It  is  the  Eskimo  custom  to  entomb  with 
the  dead  man  all  and  every  possession  which  he 
might  want  hereafter,  the  idea  being  that  the  spirit  of 
the  implement  accompanies  the  man's  spirit.  Relics 
of  ancient  whaling  establishments,  possibly  early  Basque, 
are  found  in  plenty  at  one  village,  while  even  to-day 
the  trapper  there  needing  a  runner  for  his  komatik  can 
always  hook  up  a  whale's  jaw  or  rib  from  the  mud  of 
the  harbour.  Relics  of  rovers  of  the  sea,  who  sought 
shelter  on  this  uncharted  coast  with  its  million  is- 
lands, are  still  to  be  found.  A  friend  of  mine  was  one 
day  looking  from  his  boat  into  the  deep,  narrow  chan- 
nel in  front  of  his  house,  when  he  perceived  some  strange 
object  in  the  mud.  With  help  he  raised  it,  and  found 
a  long  brass  "Long  Tom"  cannon,  which  now  stands 
on  the  rocks  at  that  place.  Remains  of  the  ancient 
French  occupation  should  also  be  procurable  near  the 
seat  of  their  deserted  capital  near  Bradore. 

My  friend,  Professor  Reginald  Daly,  head  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Geology  at  Harvard  University,  after  having 
spent  a  summer  with  me  on  the  coast,  wrote  as  follows: 


158  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

"We  crossed  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle  once  more, 
homeward  bound.  Old  Jacques  Cartier,  searching  for 
an  Eldorado,  found  Labrador,  and  in  disgust  called  it 
the  'Land  of  Cain.'  A  century  and  a  half  afterward  Lieu- 
tenant Roger  Curtis  wrote  of  it  as  a  '  country  formed  of 
frightful  mountains,  and  unfruitful  valleys,  a  prodigious 
heap  of  barren  rock';  and  George  Cartwright,  in  his 
gossipy  journal,  summed  up  his  impressions  after  five 
and  twenty  years  on  the  coast.  He  said,  'God  created 
this  country  last  of  all,  and  threw  together  there  the 
refuse  of  his  materials  as  of  no  use  to  mankind.' 

"We  have  learned  at  last  the  vital  fact  that  Nature 
has  set  apart  her  own  picture  galleries  where  men  may 
resort  if  for  a  time  they  would  forget  human  contri- 
vances. Such  a  wilderness  is  Labrador,  a  kind  of  men- 
tal and  moral  sanitarium.  The  beautiful  is  but  the 
visible  splendor  of  the  true.  The  enjoyment  of  a  visit 
to  the  coast  may  consist  not  alone  in  the  impressions 
of  the  scenery;  there  may  be  added  the  deeper  pleasure 
of  reading  out  the  history  of  noble  landscapes,  the 
sculptured  monuments  of  elemental  strife  and  revolu- 
tions of  distant  ages.'* 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LECTURING  AND  CRUISING 

We  had  now  been  coming  for  some  two  years  to  the 
coast,  and  the  problem  was  assuming  larger  proportions 
than  I  felt  the  Society  at  home  ought  to  be  called  on 
to  finance.  It  seemed  advisable,  therefore,  to  try  and 
raise  money  in  southern  Newfoundland  and  Canada. 
So  under  the  wing  of  the  most  famous  seal  and  fish 
killer,  Captain  Samuel  Blandford,  I  next  visited  and  lec- 
tured in  St.  John's,  Harbour  Grace,  and  Carbonear. 

The  towns  in  Newfoundland  are  not  large.  Its  sec- 
tarian schools  and  the  strong  denominational  feeling 
between  the  churches  so  greatly  divide  the  people  that 
united  efforts  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  were  extremely 
rare  before  the  war.  Even  now  there  is  no  Y.M.C.A. 
or  Y.W.C.A,  in  the  Colony.  The  Boys'  Brigade,  which 
we  initiated  our  first  year,  divided  as  it  grew  in  impor- 
tance, into  the  Church  Lads  Brigade,  the  Catholic 
Cadet  Corps,  and  the  Methodist  Guards. 

Dr.  Bobardt,  my  young  Australian  colleague,  and  I 
now  decided  to  cross  over  to  Halifax.  We  had  only 
a  certain  amount  of  money  for  the  venture;  it  was  our 
first  visit  to  Canada,  and  we  knew  no  one.  We  carried 
credentials,  however,  from  the  Marquis  of  Ripon  and 
other  reputable  persons.  If  we  had  had  experience  as 
commercial  travellers,  this  would  have  been  child's  play. 
But  our  education  had  been  in  an  English  school  and  uni- 
versity; and  when  finally  we  sat  at  breakfast  at  the 
Halifax  hotel  we  felt  like  fish  out  of  water.  Such  suc- 
cess as  we  obtained  subsequently  I  attribute  entirely 
to  what  then  seemed  to  me  my  colleague's  colonial 


160  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

"cheek."  He  insisted  that  we  should  call  on  the  most 
prominent  persons  at  once,  the  Prime  Minister,  the 
General  in  charge  of  the  garrison,  the  Presidents  of  the 
Board  of  Trade  and  University,  the  Governor  of  the 
Province,  and  all  the  leading  clergymen.  There  have 
been  times  when  I  have  hesitated  about  getting  my  an- 
chors for  sea,  when  the  barometer  was  falling,  the  wind 
in,  and  a  fog-bank  on  the  horizon  —  but  now,  years 
after,  I  still  recall  my  reluctance  to  face  that  ordeal. 
But  like  most  things,  the  obstacles  were  largely  in  one's 
own  mind,  and  the  kindness  which  we  received  left  me 
entirely  overwhelmed.  Friends  formed  a  regular  com- 
mittee to  keep  a  couple  of  cots  going  in  our  hospital, 
to  collect  supplies,  and  sent  us  to  Montreal  with  in- 
troductions and  endorsements.  Some  of  these  people 
have  since  been  lifelong  helpers  of  the  Labrador  Mis- 
sion. 

By  the  time  we  reached  Montreal,  our  funds  were 
getting  low,  but  Dr.  Bobardt  insisted  that  we  must 
engage  the  best  accommodations,  even  if  it  prevented 
our  travelling  farther  west.  The  result  was  that  re- 
porters insisted  on  interviewing  him  as  to  the  purpose 
of  an  Australian  coming  to  Montreal;  and  I  was  startled 
to  see  a  long  account  which  he  had  jokingly  given  them 
published  in  the  morning  papers,  stating  that  his  pur- 
pose was  to  materialize  the  All  Red  Line  and  arrange 
closer  relations  between  Australia  and  Canada.  Ac- 
cording to  his  report  my  object  was  to  inspect  my 
ranch  in  Alberta.  Life  to  him,  whether  on  the  Labrador 
Coast,  in  an  English  school,  or  in  his  Australian  home, 
was  one  perpetual  picnic. 

Naturally,  our  most  important  interview  was  with 
Lord  Strathcona.  He  was  President  of  the  Hudson 
Bay  Company,  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railroad,  and  the 


LECTURING  AND  CRUISING  161 

Bank  of  Montreal.  As  a  poor  Scotcli  lad  named  Donald 
Smith  he  had  lived  for  thirteen  years  of  his  early  life 
in  Labrador.  There  he  had  fomid  a  wife  and  there  his 
daughter  was  born.  From  the  very  first  he  was  thor- 
oughly interested  in  our  work,  and  all  through  the  years 
until  his  death  in  1914  his  support  was  maintained,  so 
that  at  the  very  time  he  died  we  were  actually  due  to 
visit  him  the  following  month  at  KJuelsworth. 

We  hired  the  best  hall  and  advertised  Sir  Donald  as 
our  chairman.  To  save  expense  Dr.  Bobardt  acted  in 
the  ticket-box.  When  Sir  Donald  came  along,  not 
having  seen  him  previously,  he  insisted  on  collecting 
fifty  cents  from  him  as  from  the  rest.  When  Sir  Don- 
ald strongly  protested  that  he  was  our  chairman,  the 
shrewd  young  doctor  merely  replied  that  several  others 
before  him  had  made  the  same  remark.  Every  one  in 
the  city  knew  Sir  Donald;  and  when  the  matter  was 
explained  to  him  in  the  greenroom,  he  was  thoroughly 
pleased  with  the  business-like  attitude  of  the  Mission. 
As  we  had  never  seen  Canada  he  insisted  that  we  must 
take  a  holiday  and  visit  as  far  west  as  British  Columbia. 
All  of  this  he  not  only  arranged  freely  for  us,  but  even 
saw  to  such  details  as  that  we  should  ride  on  the  engine 
through  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  be  entertained  at 
his  home  called  "Silver  Heights"  while  in  Winnipeg. 
It  was  during  this  trip  that  I  visited  "Grenfell  Town," 
a  queer  little  place  called  after  Pascoe  Grenfell,  of  the 
Bank  of  England.  The  marvel  of  the  place  to  me  was 
the  thousands  and  thousands  of  acres  of  splendid  farm- 
land on  which  no  one  lived.  I  promised  that  I  would 
send  the  hotel-keeper  the  Grenfell  crest. 

Lord  Strathcona  later  presented  the  Mission  with  a  fine 
little  steamer,  the  Sir  Donald,  purchased  and  equipped 
at  his  expense  through  the  Committee  in  Montreal. 


162  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

We  went  back  to  England  very  well  satisfied  with 
our  work.  Dr.  Bobardt  left  me  and  entered  the  Navy, 
while  I  returned  the  following  year  and  steamed  the 
new  boat  from  Montreal  down  the  St.  Lawrence  River 
and  the  Straits  to  Battle  Harbour.  There  the  Albert, 
which  had  sailed  again  from  England  with  doctors, 
nurses,  and  supplies,  was  to  meet  me.  We  had  made 
a  fine  voyage,  visiting  all  along  the  coast  as  we  journeyed, 
and  had  turned  in  from  sea  through  the  last  "run,"  or 
passage  between  islands.  We  had  polished  our  brass- 
work,  cleaned  up  our  decks,  hoisted  our  flags,  all  that 
we  might  make  a  triumphant  entry  on  our  arrival  a 
few  minutes  later  —  when  sudddenly.  Buff  —  Bur-r  — 
Buff,  we  rose,  staggered,  and  fell  over  on  a  horrible 
submerged  shoal.  Our  side  was  gored,  our  propeller 
and  shaft  gone,  our  keel  badly  splintered,  and  the  ship 
left  high  and  dry.  When  we  realized  our  mistake  and 
the  dreadful  position  into  which  we  had  put  ourselves, 
we  rowed  ashore  to  the  nearest  island,  walked  three  or 
four  miles  over  hill  and  bog,  and  from  there  got  a  fish- 
erman with  a  boat  to  put  us  over  to  Battle  Harbour 
Island.  The  good  ship  Albert  lay  at  anchor  in  the 
harbour.  Our  new  colleagues  and  old  friends  were  all 
impatiently  waiting  to  see  our  fine  new  steamer  speed 
in  with  all  her  flags  up  —  when,  instead,  two  bedrag- 
gled-looking tramps,  crestfallen  almost  to  weeping, 
Hterally  crept  aboard. 

Sympathy  took  the  form  of  deeds  and  a  crowd  at 
once  went  round  in  boats  with  a  museum  of  implements. 
Soon  they  had  her  off,  and  our  plucky  schooner  took  her 
in  tow  all  the  three  hundred  miles  to  the  nearest  dry- 
dock  at  St.  John's. 

Meanwhile  Sir  Thomas  Roddick,  of  Montreal,  an 
old  Newfoundlander,  had  presented  us  with  a  splendid 


LECTURING  AND  CRUISING  163 

twenty-foot  jolly-boat,  rigged  with  lug-sail  and  centre- 
boom.  In  this  I  cruised  north  to  Eskimo  Bay,  har- 
bouring at  nights  if  possible,  getting  a  local  pilot  when 
I  could,  and  once  being  taken  bodily  on  board,  craft 
and  all,  by  a  big  friendly  fishing  schooner.  It  proved 
a  most  profitable  summer.  I  was  so  dependent  on  the 
settlers  and  fishermen  for  food  and  hospitality  that  I 
learned  to  know  them  as  would  otherwise  have  been  im- 
possible. Far  the  best  road  to  a  seaman's  heart  is  to 
let  him  do  something  for  you.  Our  impressions  of  a 
landscape,  like  our  estimates  of  character,  all  depend 
on  our  viewpoint.  Fresh  from  the  more  momentous 
problems  of  great  cities,  the  interests  and  misunder- 
standings of  small  isolated  places  bias  the  mind  and 
make  one  censorious  and  resentful.  But  from  the  po- 
sition of  a  tight  corner,  that  of  needing  help  and  hospi- 
tality from  entire  strangers,  one  learns  how  large  are 
the  hearts  and  homes  of  those  who  live  next  to  Nature. 
If  I  knew  the  Labrador  people  before  (and  among  such 
I  include  the  Hudson  Bay  traders  and  the  Newfound- 
land fishermen),  that  summer  made  me  love  them.  I 
could  not  help  feeling  how  much  more  they  gladly  and 
freely  did  for  me  than  I  should  have  dreamed  of  doing 
for  them  had  they  come  along  to  my  house  in  London. 
I  have  sailed  the  seas  in  ocean  greyhounds  and  in  float- 
ing palaces  and  in  steam  yachts,  but  better  than  any 
other  I  love  to  dwell  on  the  memories  of  that  summer, 
cruising  the  Labrador  in  a  twenty-footer. 

That  year  I  was  late  returning  South.  Progress  is 
slow  in  the  fall  of  the  year  along  the  Labrador  in  a  boat 
of  that  capacity.  I  was  weather-bound,  with  the  snow 
already  on  the  ground  in  Square  Island  Harbour.  The 
fishery  of  the  settlers  had  been  very  poor.  The  traders 
coming  South  had  passed  them  by.     There  were  eight 


164  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

montlis  of  winter  ahead,  and  practically  no  supplies 
for  the  dozen  families  of  the  Uttle  village.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  confidence  of  the  patriarch  of  the  settlement. 
Uncle  Jim,  whose  guest  I  was.  The  fact  that  we  were 
without  butter,  and  that  "sweetness]"  (molasses)  was 
low,  was  scarcely  even  noticed.  I  remember  as  if  it 
were  yesterday  the  stimulating  tang  of  the  frosty  air 
and  the  racy  problem  of  the  open  sea  yet  to  be  covered. 
The  bag  of  birds  which  we  had  captured  when  we  had 
driven  in  for  shelter  from  the  storm  made  our  dry-diet 
supper  sweeter  than  any  Delmonico  ten-course  dinner, 
because  we  had  wrested  it  ourselves  from  the  reluc- 
tant environment.  Then  last  of  all  came  the  general 
meeting  in  Uncle  Jim's  house  at  night  to  ask  the  Lord 
to  open  the  windows  of  heaven  for  the  benefit  of  the 
pathetic  little  group  on  the  island.  Next  morning  the 
first  thing  on  which  our  eyes  lighted  was  the  belated 
trader,  actually  driven  north  again  by  the  storm,  an- 
chored right  in  the  harbour.  Of  course  Uncle  Jim 
knew  that  it  would  be  there.  Personally,  I  did  not 
expect  her,  so  can  claim  no  credit  for  the  telepathy; 
but  if  faith  ever  did  work  wonders  it  was  on  that  oc- 
casion. There  were  laughing  faces  and  happy  hearts  as 
we  said  good-bye,  when  my  dainty  little  lady  spread  her 
wings  to  a  fair  breeze  a  day  or  so  later. 

The  gallant  little  Sir  Donald  did  herself  every  credit 
the  following  year,  and  we  not  only  visited  the  coast 
as  far  north  as  Cape  Chidley,  but  explored  the  narrow 
channel  which  runs  through  the  land  into  Ungava  Bay, 
and  places  Cape  Chidley  itself  on  a  detached  island. 

There  were  a  great  many  fishing  schooners  far  north 
that  season,  and  the  keen  pleasures  of  exploring  a  truly 
marvellous  coast,  practically  uncharted  and  unknown, 
were  redeemed  from  the  reproach  of  selfishness  by  the 


THE  LABRADOR  DOCTOR  IN  SUMMER 


LECTURING  AND  CRUISING  165 

numerous  opportunities  for  service  to  one's  fellow 
men. 

Once  that  summer  we  were  eleven  days  stuck  in 
the  ice,  and  while  there  the  huge  mail  steamer  broke 
her  propeller,  and  a  boat  was  sent  up  to  us  through 
the  ice  to  ask  for  our  help.  The  truck  on  my  mast- 
heads was  just  up  to  her  deck.  The  ice  was  a  lot  of 
trouble,  but  we  got  her  into  safety.  On  board  were  the 
superintendent  of  the  Moravian  Missions  and  his  wife. 
They  were  awfully  grateful.  The  great  tub  rolled 
about  so  in  the  Atlantic  swell  that  the  big  ice-pans 
nearly  came  on  deck.  My  dainty  little  lady  took  no 
notice  of  anything  and  picked  her  way  among  the  pans 
like  Agag  "treading  dehcately."  We  had  five  hours' 
good  push,  however,  to  get  into  Battle  Harbour.  It 
was  calm  in  the  ice-field,  only  the  heavy  tide  made  it 
run  and  the  little  "alive"  steamer  with  human  skill  beat 
the  massive  mountains  of  ice  into  a  cocked  hat. 

At  Indian  Tickle  there  is  a  nice  little  church  which 
was  built  by  subscription  and  free  labour  the  second 
year  we  came  on  the  coast.  There  is  one  especially 
charming  feature  about  this  building.  It  stands  in 
such  a  position  that  you  can  see  it  as  you  come  from  the 
north  miles  away  from  the  harbour  entrance,  and  it 
is  so  situated  that  it  leads  directly  into  the  safe  anchorage. 
There  are  no  lights  to  guide  sailors  on  this  coast  at  all, 
and  yet  during  September,  October,  and  November, 
three  of  the  most  dangerous  months  in  the  year,  hun- 
dreds of  schooners  and  thousands  of  men,  women,  and 
children  are  coming  into  or  passing  through  this  har- 
bour on  their  way  to  the  southward.  By  a  nice  ar- 
rangement the  little  east  window  points  to  the  north 
—  if  that  is  not  Irish  —  and  two  large  bracket  lamps 
can  be  turned  on  a  pivot,  so  that  the  lamps  and  their 


166  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

reflectors  throw  a  light  out  to  sea.  The  good  planter, 
at  his  own  expense,  often  maintains  a  light  here  on  stormy 
or  dark  nights,  and  "steering  straight  for  it"  brings  one 
to  safety. 

While  cruising  near  Cape  Chidley,  a  schooner  sig- 
nalling with  flag  at  half-mast  attracted  our  attention. 
On  going  aboard  we  found  a  yoimg  man  with  the  globe 
of  one  eye  ruptured  by  a  gun  accident,  in  great  pain, 
and  in  danger  of  losing  the  other  eye  sympathetically. 
Having  excised  the  globe,  we  allowed  him  to  go  back 
to  his  vessel,  intensely  grateful,  but  full  of  apprehension 
as  to  how  his  girl  would  regard  him  on  his  return  South. 
It  so  happened  that  we  had  had  a  gift  of  false  eyes,  and 
we  therefore  told  him  to  call  in  at  hospital  on  his  way 
home  and  take  his  chance  on  getting  a  blue  one.  While 
walking  over  the  hill  near  the  hospital  that  fall  I  ran 
into  a  crowd  of  young  fishermen,  whose  schooner  was 
wind-bound  in  the  harbour,  and  who  had  been  into  the 
country  for  an  hom-'s  trouting.  One  asked  me  to  look 
at  his  eye,  as  something  was  wrong  with  it.  Being  in  a 
hurry,  I  simply  remarked,  "Come  to  hospital,  and  I'll 
examine  it  for  you";  whereupon  he  burst  out  into  a 
merry  laugh,  "Why,  Doctor,  I'm  the  boy  whose  eye 
you  removed.  This  is  the  glass  one  you  promised. 
Do  you  think  it  will  suit  her?  " 

Another  time  I  was  called  to  a  large  schooner  in  the 
same  region.  There  were  two  young  girls  on  board 
doing  the  cooking  and  cleaning,  as  was  the  wont  in 
Newfoundland  vessels.  One,  alas,  was  seriously  ill, 
having  given  birth  to  a  premature  child,  and  hav- 
ing lain  absolutely  helpless,  with  only  a  crew  of  kind 
but  strange  men  anywhere  near.  Rolling  her  up  in 
blankets,  we  transferred  her  to  the  Sir  Donald,  and 
steamed  for  the  nearest   Moravian  station.   Here  the 


LECTURING  AND  CRUISING  167 

necessary  treatment  was  possible,  and  when  we  left 
for  the  South  a  Moravian's  good  wife  accompanied  us 
as  nurse.  The  girl,  however,  had  no  wish  to  live.  "I 
want  to  die,  Doctor;  I  can  never  go  home  again."  Her 
physical  troubles  had  abated,  but  her  mind  was  made 
up  to  die,  and  this,  in  spite  of  all  our  care,  she  did  a  few 
days  later.  The  pathos  of  the  scene  as  we  rowed  the 
poor  child's  body  ashore  for  interment  on  a  rocky  and 
lonely  headland,  looking  out  over  the  great  Atlantic, 
wrapped  simply  in  the  flag  of  her  country,  will  never  be 
forgotten  by  any  of  us  —  the  silent  but  unanswerable 
reproach  on  man's  utter  selfishness.  Many  such  scenes 
must  rise  to  the  memory  of  the  general  practitioner;  at 
times,  thank  God,  affording  those  opportunities  of  doing 
more  for  the  patients  than  simply  patching  up  their 
bodies  —  opportunities  which  are  the  real  reward  for  the 
"art  of  healing."  Some  years  later  I  revisited  the  grave 
of  this  poor  girl,  marked  by  the  simple  wooden  cross 
which  we  had  then  put  up,  and  bearing  the  simple  in- 
scription : 

Suzanne 
"Jesus  said.  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee." 

The  fall  trip  lasted  till  late  into  November,  without 
our  even  realizing  the  fact  that  snow  was  on  the  ground. 
Indeed  the  ponds  were  all  frozen  and  we  enjoyed  drives 
with  dog  teams  on  the  land  before  we  had  finished 
our  work  and  could  think  of  leaving.  We  had  scarcely 
left  Flowers  Cove  and  were  just  burying  our  little 
steamer  —  loaded  to  the  utmost  with  wood,  cut  in  re- 
turn for  winter  clothing  —  in  the  dense  fog  which  al- 
most universally  maintains  in  the  Straits,  and  were 
rounding  the  hidden  ledges  of  rock  which  lie  half  a 
mile  offshore,  when  we  discovered  a  huge  trans-Atlantic 


168  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

liner  racing  up  in  our  wake.  We  instantly  put  down 
our  helm  and  scuttled  out  of  the  way  to  avoid  the  wash, 
and  almost  held  our  breath  as  the  great  steamer  dashed 
by  at  twenty  miles  an  hour,  between  us  and  the  hidden 
shoal.  She  altered  her  helm  as  she  did  so,  no  doubt 
catching  her  first  sight  of  the  lighthouse  as  she  emerged 
from  the  fog-bank,  but  as  it  was,  she  must  have  passed 
within  an  ace  of  the  shoal.  We  expected  every  minute 
to  see  her  dash  on  the  top  of  it,  and  then  she  passed  out 
of  sight  once  more,  her  light-hearted  passengers  no 
doubt  completely  unconscious  that  they  had  been  in 
any  danger  at  all. 

The  last  port  of  call  was  Henley,  or  Chateau,  where 
formerly  the  British  had  placed  a  fort  to  defend  it  against 
the  French.  We  had  carried  round  with  us  a  prospec- 
tive bridegroom,  and  we  were  privileged  to  witness  the 
wedding,  a  simple  but  very  picturesque  proceeding. 
A  parson  had  be«i  fetched  from  thirty  miles  away,  and 
every  kind  of  hospitality  provided  for  the  festive  event. 
But  in  spite  of  the  warmth  of  the  occasion  the  weather 
turned  bitterly  cold,  the  harbour  "caught  over,'*  and 
for  a  week  we  were  prisoners.  When  at  last  the  young 
ice  broke  up  again,  we  made  an  attempt  to  cross  the 
Straits,  but  sea  and  wind  caught  us  halfway  and  forced 
us  to  run  back,  this  time  in  the  thick  fog.  The  Straits' 
current  had  carried  us  a  few  miles  in  the  meanwhile  — 
which  way  we  did  not  know  —  and  the  land,  hard  to 
make  out  as  it  was  in  the  fog,  was  white  with  snow. 
However,  with  the  storm  increasing  and  the  long  dark 
night  ahead,  we  took  a  sporting  chance,  and  ran  direct 
in  on  the  cliflPs.  How  we  escaped  shipwreck  I  do  not 
know  now.  We  suddenly  saw  a  rock  on  our  bow  and 
a  sheer  precipice  ahead,  twisted  round  on  our  heel, 
shot  between  the  two,  and  we  knew  where  we  were, 


LECTURING  AND  CRUISING  169 

as  that  is  the  only  rock  on  a  coast-Hne  of  twenty  miles 
of  beach  —  but  there  really  is  no  room  between  it  and 
the  cliff. 

All  along  the  coast  that  year  we  noticed  a  change 
of  attitude  toward  professional  medical  aid.  Confidence 
in  the  wise  woman,  in  the  seventh  son  and  his  "wonder- 
ful" power,  in  the  use  of  charms  like  green  worsted, 
haddock  fins,  or  scrolls  of  prayer  tied  round  the  neck, 
had  begun  to  waver.  The  world  talks  still  of  a  blind 
man  made  to  see  nineteen  hundred  years  ago;  but  the 
coast  had  recently  been  more  thrilled  by  the  tale  of  a 
blind  man  made  to  see  by  "these  yere  doctors."  One 
was  a  man  who  for  seventeen  years  had  given  up  all 
hope;  and  two  others,  old  men,  parted  for  years,  and 
whose  first  occasion  of  seeing  again  had  revealed  to 
them  the  fact  that  they  were  brothers. 

Some  lame  had  also  been  made  to  walk  —  persons  who 
had  abandoned  hope  quite  as  much  as  he  who  lay  for 
forty  years  by  the  Pool  of  Siloam,  or  for  a  similar  period 
at  the  Golden  Gate. 

One  of  my  first  operations  had  been  rendered  abso- 
lutely inescapable  by  the  great  pain  caused  by  a  tumour 
in  the  leg.  The  patient  had  insisted  on  having  five  men 
sit  on  her  while  the  operation  proceeded,  as  she  did  not 
believe  it  was  right  to  be  put  to  sleep,  and,  moreover, 
she  secretly  feared  that  she  might  not  wake  up  again. 
But  now  the  conversion  of  the  coast  had  proceeded  so 
far  that  many  were  pleading  for  a  winter  doctor.  At 
first  we  did  not  think  it  feasible,  but  my  colleague, 
Dr.  Willway,  finally  volunteered  to  stay  at  Battle 
Harbour.  We  loaded  him  up  with  all  our  spare  assets 
against  the  experiment,  the  hospital  being  but  very 
ill-equipped  for  an  Arctic  winter.  When  the  following 
summer  we  approached  the  coast,   it  was  with  real 


170  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

trepidation  that  I  scanned  the  land  for  signs  of  my 
derelict  friend.  We  felt  that  he  would  be  gravely  al- 
tered at  least,  possibly  having  grown  hair  all  over  his 
face.  When  an  alert,  tanned,  athletic  figure,  neatly  ton- 
sured and  barbered,  at  last  leaped  over  our  rail,  all 
our  sympathy  vanished  and  gave  way  to  jealousy. 

One  detail,  however,  had  gone  wrong.  We  had  an- 
chored our  beautiful  Sir  Donald  in  his  care  in  a  har- 
bour off  the  long  bay  on  the  shores  of  which  he  was  winter- 
ing. He  had  seen  her  once  or  twice  in  her  ice  prison, 
but  when  he  came  to  look  for  her  in  the  spring,  she 
had  mysteriously  disappeared.  The  ice  was  there  still. 
There  was  n  't  a  vestige  of  wreckage.  She  must  have 
sunk,  and  the  hole  frozen  up.  Yet  an  extended  period 
of  "creeping"  the  bottom  with  drags  and  grapples 
had  revealed  nothing,  and,  anyhow,  the  water  not  being 
deep,  her  masts  should  have  been  easily  visible.  It 
was  not  till  some  time  later  that  we  heard  from  the 
South  that  our  trusty  craft  had  been  picked  up  some 
three  hundred  miles  to  the  southward  and  westward, 
well  out  in  a  heavy  ice-pack,  and  right  in  amongst  a 
big  patch  of  seals,  away  off  on  the  Atlantic.  The  whole 
of  the  bay  ice  had  evidently  gone  out  together,  taking 
the  ship  with  it,  and  the  bay  had  then  neatly  frozen 
over  again.  The  seal  hunters  laughingly  assured  me 
that  they  found  a  patch  of  old  "s wiles"  having  tea  in 
the  cabin.  As  the  hull  of  the  Sir  Donald  was  old,  and 
the  size  of  the  boat  made  good  medical  work  aboard  im- 
possible, we  decided  to  sell  her  and  try  and  raise  the 
funds  for  a  more  seaworthy  and  capable  craft. 

Years  of  experience  have  subsequently  emphasized 
the  fact  that  if  you  are  reasonably  resistant,  and  want 
to  get  tough  and  young  again,  you  can  do  far  worse 
than  come  and  winter  on  "the  lonely  Labrador." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  SEAL  FISHERY 

Returning  South  in  the  fall  of  1895,  business  ne- 
cessitated my  remaining  for  some  time  in  St.  John's, 
where  as  previously  the  Governor,  Sir  Terence  O'Brien, 
very  kindly  entertained  me.  It  proved  to  be  a  most 
exciting  time.  There  were  only  two  banks  in  the  Col- 
ony, called  respectively  the  Union  and  the  Commercial. 
These  issued  all  the  notes  used  in  the  country  and  ex- 
cept for  the  savings  bank  had  all  the  deposits  of  the 
fishermen  and  people.  Suddenly  one  day  I  was  told, 
though  with  extreme  secrecy,  that  the  two  banks  were 
unsound  and  would  not  again  open  after  Monday 
morning.  This  was  early  on  Saturday.  Business  went 
on  as  usual,  but  among  the  leaders  of  the  country  con- 
sternation was  beginning  to  spread.  The  banks  closed 
at  their  usual  hour  —  three  o  'clock  on  Saturday,  and 
so  far  as  I  knew  no  one  profited  by  the  secret  knowl- 
edge, though  later  accusations  were  made  against  some 
people.  The  serious  nature  of  the  impending  disaster 
never  really  dawned  on  me,  not  being  either  personally 
concerned  in  either  bank  or  having  any  experience  of 
finance.  When  the  collection  came  around  at  the  cathe- 
dral on  Sunday  my  friend  whispered  to  me,  "That 
silver  will  be  valuable  to-morrow."  It  so  happened  that 
on  Sunday  I  was  dining  with  the  Prime  Minister,  who 
had  befriended  all  our  efforts,  and  his  tremendously 
serious  view  of  the  position  of  the  Colony  sent  me  to 
bed  full  of  alarms  for  my  new  friends.  We  were  to 
have  sailed  for  England  next  day  and  I  went  down 
after  breakfast  to  buy  my  ticket.  The  agent  sold  it, 


172  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

but  remarked,  "I  am  not  sure  if  Newfoundland  money 
is  good  any  longer.  It  is  a  speculation  selling  you  this 
ticket."  Before  we  sailed  the  vessel  was  held  up  by  the 
Government,  as  only  a  few  of  the  ships  were  taking  notes 
at  face  value.  Those  of  the  Commercial  Bank  were 
only  fetching  twenty  cents.  Besides  the  banks  quite 
a  number  of  commercial  firms  also  closed.  The  direc- 
tors of  the  banks  were  all  local  merchants,  and  many 
were  heavily  indebted  to  them  for  supplies  given  out 
to  their  "planters,"  as  they  call  the  fishermen  whom 
they  supply  with  goods  in  advance  to  catch  fish  for 
them.  It  was  a  sorry  mix-up,  and  business  was  very  dif- 
ficult to  carry  on  because  we  had  no  medium  of  ex- 
change. Even  the  Governor  to  pay  his  gardener  had  to 
give  I.O.U.  orders  on  shops  —  there  simply  being  no 
currency  available. 

Matters  have  long  since  adjusted  themselves,  though 
neither  bank  ever  reopened.  Larger  banks  of  good 
standing  came  in  from  Canada,  and  no  one  can  find 
anything  of  which  to  complain  in  the  financial  affairs 
of  the  "oldest  Colony,"  even  in  these  days  of  war. 

Newfoundland  has  a  large  seal  as  well  as  cod  fishery. 
The  great  sealing  captains  are  all  aristocrats  of  the 
fishermen  and  certainly  are  an  unusually  fine  set  of 
men.  The  work  calls  for  peculiar  training  in  the  hardest 
of  schools,  for  great  self-reliance  and  resource,  besides 
skill  in  handling  men  and  ships.  In  those  days  the 
doyen  of  the  fleet  was  Captain  Samuel  Blandford.  He 
fired  me  with  tales  of  the  hardships  to  be  encountered 
and  the  opportunities  and  needs  for  a  doctor  among  three 
hundred  men  hundreds  of  miles  from  anywhere.  The 
result  was  a  decision  to  return  early  from  my  lecture 
tour  and  go  out  with  the  seal  hunters  of  the  good  ship 
Neptune. 


THE  SEAL  FISHERY  173 

I  look  back  on  this  as  one  of  the  great  treats  of  my 
life;  though  I  beheve  it  to  be  an  industry  seriously  de- 
trimental to  the  welfare  of  the  people  of  the  Colony 
and  the  outside  world.  For  no  mammal  bringing  forth 
but  one  young  a  year  can  stand,  when  their  young  are 
just  born  and  are  entirely  helpless,  being  attacked  by 
huge  steel-protected  steamers  carrying  hundreds  of  men 
with  modern  rifles  or  even  clubs.  Advantage  is  also 
taken  of  the  maternal  instinct  to  get  the  mothers  as 
well  as  the  young  "fat,"  if  the  latter  is  not  obtainable 
in  sufficient  quantities.  Meanwhile  the  poor  scattered 
people  of  the  northern  shores  of  Newfoundland  are 
being  absolutely  ruined  and  driven  out.  They  need  the 
seals  for  clothing,  boots,  fresh  food,  and  fats.  They  use 
every  portion  of  the  few  animals  which  each  catches, 
while  the  big  steamers  lose  thousands  which  they  have 
killed,  by  not  carrying  them  at  once  to  the  ship  and  leav- 
ing them  in  piles  to  be  picked  up  later.  Moreover,  in  the 
latter  case  all  the  good  proteid  food  of  their  carcasses  is 
left  to  the  sharks  and  gulls. 

At  twelve  o'clock  of  March  10,  1896,  the  good  ship 
Neptune  hauled  out  into  the  stream  at  St.  John's  Har- 
bour, Newfoundland,  preparatory  to  weighing  anchor  for 
the  seal  fishery.  The  law  allows  no  vessels  to  sail  before 
2  P.M.  on  that  day,  under  a  penalty  of  four  thousand  dol- 
lars fine  —  nor  may  any  seals  be  killed  from  the  steamers 
until  March  14,  and  at  no  time  on  Sundays.  The  whole 
city  of  St.  John's  seemed  to  be  engrossed  in  the  one  ab- 
sorbing topic  of  the  seal  fishery.  It  meant  if  successful 
some  fifty  thousand  pounds  sterling  at  least  to  the  Colony 
—  it  meant  bread  for  thousands  of  people  —  it  meant 
for  days  and  even  weeks  past  that  men  from  far-away 
outports  had  been  slowly  collecting  at  the  capital,  till 
the  main  street  was  peopled  all  day  with  anxious-looking 


174  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

crowds,  and  all  the  wharves  where  there  was  any  chance 
of  a  "berth"  to  the  ice  were  fairly  in  a  state  of  siege. 

Now  let  us  go  down  to  the  dock  and  visit  the  ship  be- 
fore she  starts.  She  is  a  large  barque-rigged  vessel,  with 
auxiliary  steam,  or  rather  one  should  say  a  steamer  with 
auxiliary  sails.  The  first  point  that  strikes  one  is  her 
massive  build,  her  veritable  bulldog  look  as  she  sits  on 
the  water.  Her  sides  are  some  eighteen  inches  thick,  and 
sheathed  and  resheathed  with  "greenheart"  to  help  her 
in  battering  the  ice.  Inside  she  is  ceiled  with  English  oak 
and  beech,  so  that  her  portholes  look  like  the  arrow  slits 
of  the  windows  of  an  old  feudal  castle.  Her  bow  is  double- 
stemmed  —  shot  with  a  broad  band  of  iron,  and  the 
space  of  some  seventeen  feet  between  the  two  stems 
solid  with  the  choicest  hardwoods.  Below  decks  every 
corner  is  adapted  to  some  use.  There  are  bags  of  flour, 
hard  bread,  and  food  for  the  crew  of  three  hundred  and 
twenty  men;  five  hundred  tons  of  coal  for  the  hungry 
engine  in  her  battle  with  the  ice-fioe.  The  vessel  carries 
only  about  eighteen  hundred  gallons  of  water  and  the 
men  use  five  hundred  in  a  day.  This,  however,  is  of  little 
consequence,  for  a  party  each  day  brings  back  plenty  of 
ice,  which  is  excellent  drinking  after  being  boiled.  This 
ice  is  of  very  different  qualities.  Now  it  is  "slob"  mixed 
with  snow  born  on  the  Newfoundland  coast.  This  is 
called  "dirty  ice"  by  the  sealers.  Even  it  at  times  packs 
very  thick  and  is  hard  to  get  through.  Then  there  is  the 
clearer,  heavy  Arctic  ice  with  here  and  there  huge  ice- 
bergs frozen  in;  and  again  the  smoother,  whiter  variety 
known  as  "whelping  ice"  —  that  is,  the  Arctic  shore  ice, 
born  probably  in  Labrador,  on  which  the  seals  give  birth 
to  their  pups. 

The  masters  of  watches  are  also  called  "  scunners"  — 
they  go  up  night  and  day  in  the  forebarrel  to  "scun"  the 


THE  SEAL  FISHERY  175 

ship  —  that  is,  to  find  the  way  or  leads  through  the  ice. 
This  word  comes  from  "con"  of  the  conning  tower  on  a 
man-of-war. 

When  the  morning  of  the  10th  arrives,  all  is  excitement. 
Fortunately  this  year  a  southwest  wind  had  blown  the 
ice  a  mile  or  so  offshore.  Now  all  the  men  are  on  board. 
The  vessels  are  in  the  stream.  The  flags  are  up;  the 
whistles  are  blowing.  The  hour  of  two  approaches  at  last, 
and  a  loud  cheering,  renewed  again  and  again,  intimates 
that  the  first  vessel  is  off,  and  the  S.S.  Aurora  comes  up 
the  harbour.  Cheers  from  the  ships,  the  wharves,  and  the 
town  answer  her  whistle,  and  closely  followed  by  the 
S.S.  Neptune  and  S.S.  Windsor,  she  gallantly  goes  out, 
the  leader  of  the  sealing  fleet  for  the  year. 

There  have  been  two  or  three  great  disasters  at  the 
seal  fishery,  where  numbers  of  men  astray  from  their 
vessels  in  heavy  snow  blizzards  on  the  ice  have  perished 
miserably.  Sixteen  fishermen  were  once  out  hunting  for 
seals  on  the  frozen  ice  of  Trinity  Bay  when  the  wind 
changed  and  drove  the  ice  offshore.  When  night  came  on 
they  realized  their  terrible  position  and  that,  with  a  gale 
of  wind  blowing,  they  could  not  hope  to  reach  land  in 
their  small  boats.  Nothing  but  an  awful  death  stared 
them  in  the  face,  for  in  order  to  hunt  over  the  ice  men 
must  be  lightly  clad,  so  as  to  run  and  jump  from  piece 
to  piece.  Without  fire,  without  food,  without  sufficient 
clothing,  exposed  to  the  pitiless  storm  on  the  frozen  sea, 
they  endured  thirty-six  hours  without  losing  a  life.  Fin- 
ally, they  dragged  their  boats  ten  miles  over  the  ice  to 
the  land,  where  they  arrived  at  last  more  dead  than  alive. 

It  is  the  physical  excitement  of  travelling  over  broken 
loose  ice  on  the  bosom  of  the  mighty  ocean,  and  the  skill 
and  athletic  qualities  which  the  work  demands,  that 
makes  one  love  the  voyage.  Jumping  from  the  side  of  the 


176  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

ship  as  she  goes  along,  skurrying  and  leaping  from  ice-pan 
to  ice-pan,  and  then  having  killed,  "sculped,"  and 
"pelted"  the  seal,  the  exciting  return  to  the  vessel!  But 
it  has  its  tragic  side,  for  it  takes  its  regular  tribute  of 
fine  human  Hfe. 

A  Mr.  Thomas  Green,  of  Greenspond,  while  a  boy, 
with  his  father  and  another  man  and  a  'prentice  lad,  was 
tending  his  seal  nets  when  a  "dwey"  or  snowstorm  came 
on,  and  the  boat  became  unmanageable  and  drifted  off 
to  sea.  They  struck  a  small  island,  but  drifted  off  again. 
That  night  the  father  and  the  'prentice  lad  died,  and 
next  morning  the  other  man  also.  The  son  dressed  him- 
self in  all  the  clothes  of  the  other  three,  whose  bodies  he 
kept  in  the  boat.  He  ate  the  flesh  of  an  old  harp  seal  they 
had  caught  in  their  net.  On  the  third  day  by  wonderful 
luck  he  gaffed  an  old  seal  in  the  slob  ice.  This  he  hauled 
in  and  drank  the  warm  blood.  On  the  fifth  day  he  killed 
a  white-coat,  and  thinking  that  he  saw  a  ship  he  walked 
five  miles  over  the  floe,  leaving  his  boat  behind.  The 
phantom  ship  proved  to  be  an  island  of  ice,  and  in  the 
night  he  had  to  tramp  back  to  his  open  punt.  On  the 
seventh  day  he  was  really  beginning  to  give  up  hope 
when  a  vessel,  the  Flora,  suddenly  hove  in  sight.  He 
shouted  loudly  as  it  was  dark,  whereupon  she  imme- 
diately tacked  as  if  to  leave  him.  Again  he  shouted,  "For 
God's  sake,  don't  leave  me  with  my  dead  father  here!" 
The  words  were  plainly  heard  on  board,  and  the  vessel 
hove  to.  The  watch  had  thought  that  his  previous  shout- 
ing was  of  supernatural  origin.  He  and  his  boat  with  its 
pitiful  load  were  picked  up  and  sent  back  home  by  a 
passing  vessel. 

On  this  particular  voyage  we  were  lucky  enough  to 
come  early  into  the  seals.  From  the  Conner's  barrel,  in 
which  I  spent  a  great  deal  of  time,  we  saw  one  morning 


THE  SEAL  FISHERY  177 

black  dots  spread  away  in  thousands  all  over  the  ice- 
floes through  which  we  were  butting,  ramming,  and 
fighting  our  way.  All  hands  were  over  the  side  at  once, 
and  very  soon  patients  began  needing  a  doctor.  Here 
a  cut,  there  a  wrench  or  sprain,  and  later  came  thirty 
or  forty  at  a  time  with  snow-blindness  or  conjunctivitis 

—  very  painful  and  disabling,  though  not  fatal  to  sight. 
One  morning  we  had  been  kept  late  relieving  these 

various  slight  ailments,  and  the  men  being  mostly  out 
on  the  ice  made  me  think  that  they  were  among  the 
seals;  so  I  started  out  alone  as  soon  as  I  could  slip  over 
the  side  to  join  them.  This,  however,  I  failed  to  do  till 
late  in  the  afternoon,  when  the  strong  wind,  which  had 
kept  the  loose  ice  packed  together,  dropped,  and  in  less 
than  no  time  it  was  all  *' running  abroad."  The  result 
naturally  is  that  one  cannot  get  along  except  by  floating 
on  one  piece  to  another,  and  that  is  a  slow  process  with- 
out oars.  It  came  on  dark  and  a  dozen  of  us  who  had  got 
together  decided  to  make  for  a  large  pan  not  far  distant; 
but  were  obliged  to  give  it  up,  and  wait  for  the  ship 
which  had  long  gone  out  of  sight.  To  keep  warm  we 
played  "leap-frog,"  "caps,"  and  "hop,  skip,  and  jump" 

—  at  which  some  were  very  proficient.  We  ate  our  sugar 
and  oatmeal,  mixed  with  some  nice  clear  snow;  and  then, 
shaving  our  wooden  seal  bat  handles,  and  dipping  them 
into  the  fat  of  the  animals  which  we  had  killed,  we  made 
a  big  blaze  periodically  to  attract  the  attention  of  the 
ship. 

It  was  well  into  the  night  before  we  were  picked  up; 
and  no  sooner  had  we  climbed  over  the  rail  than  the 
skipper  came  and  gave  us  the  best  or  worst  "blowing- 
up"  I  ever  received  since  my  father  spanked  me.  He 
told  me  afterwards  that  his  good  heart  was  really  so 
relieved  by  our  safe  return  that  he  was  scarcely  conscious 


178  A  LABEADOR  DOCTOR 

of  what  lie  said.  Indeed,  any  words  which  might  have 
been  considered  as  unpariiamentary  he  asked  me  to 
construe  as  gratitude  to  God. 

Our  captain  was  a  passenger  on  and  prospective  cap- 
tain of  the  S.S.  Tigris  when  she  picked  up  those  members 
of  the  ill-fated  Polaris  expedition  who  had  been  five 
months  on  the  ice-pans.  He  had  gone  below  from  his 
watch  and  daylight  was  just  breaking  when  the  next 
watch  came  and  reported  a  boat  and  some  people  on  a 
large  pan,  with  the  American  flag  flying.  A  kayak  came 
off  and  Hans,  an  Eskimo,  came  alongside  and  said,  "Ship 
lost.  Captain  gone."  Boats  were  immediately  lowered 
and  nineteen  persons,  including  two  women  and  one 
baby,  born  on  the  ice-pan,  came  aboard  amidst  cheers 
renewed  again  and  again.  They  had  to  be  washed  and 
fed,  cleaned  and  clothed.  The  two  officers  were  invited 
to  live  aft  and  the  remainder  of  the  rescued  party  being 
pestered  to  death  by  the  sealing  crew  in  the  forecastle, 
it  was  decided  to  abandon  the  sealing  trip,  and  the  brave 
explorers  were  carried  to  St.  John's,  the  American  people 
eventually  indemnifying  the  owners  of  the  Tigris. 

In  hunting  my  patients  I  started  round  with  a  book 
and  pencil  accompanied  by  the  steward  carrying  a  candle 
and  matches.  The  invalids  were  distributed  in  the  four 
holds  —  the  after,  the  main,  forecastle,  and  foretop- 
gallant-forecastle.  I  never  went  round  without  a  bottle 
of  cocaine  solution  in  my  pocket  for  the  snow-blind  men, 
who  suffered  the  most  excruciating  pain,  often  rolling 
about  and  moaning  as  if  in  a  kind  of  frenzy,  and  to  whom 
the  cocaine  gave  wonderful  relief.  Very  often  I  found 
that  I  must  miss  one  or  even  both  holds  on  my  first 
rounds,  for  the  ladders  were  gone  and  seals  and  coals 
were  exchanging  places  in  them  during  the  first  part  of 
the  day.  Once  down,  however,  one  shouts  out,  "Is  there 


THE  SEAL  FISHERY  179 

any  one  here?"  No  answer.  Louder  still,  "Is  there  any 
one  here?"  Perhaps  a  distant  cough  answers  from  some 
dark  recess,  and  the  steward  and  I  begin  a  search.  Then 
we  go  round  systematically,  climbing  over  on  the  barrels, 
searching  under  sacks,  and  poking  into  recesses,  and 
after  all  occasionally  missing  one  or  two  in  our  search.  It 
seems  a  pecuharity  about  the  men,  that  though  they 
will  lie  up,  they  will  not  always  say  anything  about  it. 
The  holds  were  very  damp  and  dirty,  but  the  men 
seemed  to  improve  in  health  and  fattened  like  the  young 
seals.  It  must  have  been  the  pork,  doughs,  and  excellent 
fresh  meat  of  the  seal.  We  had  boiled  or  fried  seal  quite 
often  with  onions,  and  I  must  say  that  it  was  excellent 
eating  —  far  more  palatable  than  the  dried  codfish, 
which,  when  one  has  any  ice  work,  creates  an  intolerable 
thirst. 

The  rats  were  making  a  huge  noise  one  night  and  a 
barrel  man  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  we  should  have  a 
gale  before  long;  but  a  glorious  sunshine  came  streaming 
down  upon  us  next  morning,  and  we  decided  perforce 
the  rats  were  evidently  a  little  previous. 

On  Sunday  I  had  a  good  chance  to  watch  the  seals. 
They  came  up,  simply  stared  at  the  ship;  now  from 
sheer  fat  rolling  on  their  backs,  and  lying  for  a  few 
seconds  tail  and  flippers  beating  the  air  helpless.  These 
baby  seals  resemble  on  the  ice  nothing  so  much  as  the 
South  Sea  parrot  fish  —  that  is,  a  complete  round  head, 
with  somewhere  in  the  sphere  two  huge  black  dots  for 
eyes  and  a  similar  one  for  a  nose.  These  three  form  the 
corners  of  a  small  triangle,  and  except  for  the  tail  one 
could  not  easily  tell  which  was  the  back  and  which  the 
belly  of  a  young  white-coat  —  especially  in  stormy 
weather.  For  it  is  a  well-ascertained  fact  that  Nature 
makes  the  marvellous  provision  that  in  storm  and  snow 


180  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

they  grow  fattest  and  fastest.  I  have  marvelled  greatly 
how  it  is  possible  for  any  hot-blooded  creature  to  enjoy 
so  immensely  this  terribly  cold  water  as  do  these  old 
seals.  They  paddle  about,  throw  themselves  on  their 
backs,  float  and  puff  out  their  breasts,  flapping  their 
flippers  like  paws  over  their  chests. 

Sunday  morning  we  were  lying  off  Fogo  Island  when 
some  men  came  aboard  and  reported  the  wreck  of  the 
S.S.  Wolf  in  the  ice.  She  got  round  the  island,  a  wind  off- 
shore having  cleared  the  ice  from  the  land.  Three  other 
vessels  were  behind  her.  Hardly,  however,  had  she  got 
round  when  the  northerly  wind  brought  the  ice  back. 
The  doomed  ship  now  lay  between  the  main  or  fixed 
frozen  shore  ice  and  the  immense  floe  which  was  im- 
pelled by  the  north  wind  acting  on  its  whole  irregular 
surface.  The  force  was  irresistible.  The  Wolf  backed  and 
butted  and  got  twenty  yards  into  a  nook  in  the  main  ice, 
and  lay  there  helpless  as  an  infant.  On  then  swept  the 
floe,  crashed  into  the  fixed  ice,  shattered  its  edge,  rose 
up  out  of  water  over  it,  which  is  called  "rafting,"  forced 
itself  on  the  unfortunate  ship,  rose  over  her  bulwarks, 
crushed  in  her  sides,  and  only  by  nipping  her  tightly 
avoided  sinking  her  immediately.  Seeing  that  all  was  lost. 
Captain  Kean  got  the  men  and  boats  onto  the  pans, 
took  all  they  could  save  of  food  and  clothes,  but  before 
he  had  saved  his  own  clothing,  the  ice  parted  enough  to 
let  her  through  and  she  sank  like  a  stone,  her  masts 
catching  and  breaking  in  pieces  as  she  went.  A  sorrowful 
march  for  the  shore  now  began  over  the  ice,  as  the  three 
hundred  men  started  for  home,  carrying  as  much  as  they 
could  on  their  backs.  Many  would  have  to  face  empty 
cupboards  and  hard  times;  all  would  have  days  of  walk- 
ing and  rowing  and  camping  before  they  could  get  home. 
One  hundred  miles  would  be  the  least,  two  and  even 


THE  SEAL  FISHERY  181 

three  hundred  for  some,  before  they  could  reach  their 
own  villages.  Some  of  these  poor  fellows  had  walked 
nearly  two  hundred  miles  to  get  a  chance  of  going  on  the 
lost  ship,  impelled  by  hunger  and  necessity.  Alas,  we  felt 
very  sad  for  them  and  for  Captain  Kean,  who  had  to 
face  almost  absolute  ruin  on  account  of  this  great  loss. 

The  heaving  of  the  great  pans,  like  battering-rams 
against  the  sides  of  the  Neptune,  made  a  woesome  noise 
below  decks.  I  was  often  glad  of  her  thirty-six  inches  of 
hardwood  covering.  Every  now  and  then  she  steamed 
ahead  a  little  and  pressed  into  the  ice  to  prevent  this.  I 
tried  to  climb  on  one  of  the  many  icebergs,  but  the  heavy 
swell  made  it  dangerous.  At  every  swell  it  rolled  over 
and  back  some  eight  feet,  and  as  I  watched  it  I  under- 
stood how  an  iceberg  goes  to  wind.  For  it  acted  exactly 
like  a  steam  plough,  crashing  down  onto  one  large  pan 
as  it  rolled,  and  then,  as  it  rolled  back,  lifting  up  another 
and  smashing  it  from  beneath.  A  regular  battle  seemed 
to  be  going  on,  with  weird  sounds  of  blows  and  groanings 
of  the  large  masses  of  ice.  Sometimes  as  pieces  fell  off  the 
water  would  rush  up  high  on  the  side  of  the  berg.  For 
some  reason  or  other  the  berg  had  red-and- white  streaks, 
and  looked  much  like  an  ornamental  pudding. 

At  latitude  50.18,  about  Funk  Island,  is  one  of  the  last 
refuges  of  the  great  auk.  A  few  years  ago,  the  earth,  such 
as  there  is  on  these  lonely  rocks,  was  sifted  for  the  bones 
of  that  extinct  bird,  and  I  think  three  perfect  skeletons, 
worth  a  hundred  pounds  sterling  each,  were  put  together 
from  the  remnants  discovered.  One  day  the  captain  told 
me  that  he  held  on  there  in  a  furious  gale  for  some  time. 
Masses  of  ice,  weighing  thirty  or  forty  tons,  were  hurled 
high  up  and  lodged  on  the  top  of  the  island.  Some  men 
went  out  to  "pan  "  seals  on  a  large  pan.  Seven  hundred 
of  the  animals  had  been  placed  on  one  of  them,  and  the 


182  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

men  had  just  left  it,  when  a  furious  breaking  sea  took 
hold  of  the  pan  and  threw  it  completely  upside  down. 

I  am  never  likely  to  forget  the  last  lovely  Sunday.  We 
had  nearly  "got  our  voyage  ";  at  least  no  one  was  anxious 
now  for  the  credit  of  the  ship.  The  sunshine  was  blazing 
hot  as  it  came  from  above  and  below  at  the  same  time, 
and  the  blue  sky  over  the  apparently  boundless  field  of 
heaving  "floe'*  on  which  we  lay  made  a  contrast  which 
must  be  seen  to  be  appreciated.  I  had  brought  along  a 
number  of  pocket  hymn-books  and  in  the  afternoon  we 
lay  out  on  the  high  fore-deck  and  sang  and  talked,  un- 
worried  by  callers  and  the  thousand  interruptions  of  the 
land.  Then  we  had  evening  prayers  together,  CathoHc 
and  Protestant  alike;  and  for  my  part  I  felt  the  near- 
ness of  God's  presence  as  really  as  I  have  felt  it  in  the 
mysterious  environment  of  the  most  magnificent  ca- 
thedral. Eternal  fife  seemed  so  close,  as  if  it  lay  just  over 
that  horizon  of  ice,  in  the  eternal  blue  beyond. 


CHAPTER  X 

THREE  YEARS'  WORK  IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES 

In  the  spring  of  1897  I  was  asked  by  the  Council  to  sail 
to  Iceland  with  a  view  to  opening  work  there,  in  response 
to  a  petition  sent  in  to  the  Board  by  the  Heam  long- 
liners  and  trawlers,  who  were  just  beginning  their  vast 
fishery  in  those  waters  from  Hull  and  Grimsby. 

Having  chosen  a  smaller  vessel,  so  as  to  leave  the  hos- 
pital ship  free  for  work  among  the  fleets,  we  set  sail  for 
Iceland  in  June.  The  fight  with  the  liquor  traffic  which 
the  Mission  had  been  waging  had  now  been  successful  in 
driving  the  sale  of  intoxicants  from  the  North  Sea  by 
international  agreement;  but  the  proverbial  whiskey 
still  continued  its  filibustering  work  in  the  Scotch  sea- 
ports. As  our  men  at  times  had  to  frequent  these  ports 
we  were  anxious  to  make  it  easier  for  them  to  walk 
straight  while  they  were  ashore. 

We  therefore  called  at  Aberdeen  on  the  way  and 
anchored  off  the  first  dock.  The  beautiful  Seaman's 
Home  there  was  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  harbour  for  the 
vessels,  and  was  not  offering  exactly  what  was  needed. 
So  we  obtained  leave  to  put  a  hull  in  the  basin,  with  a 
first-aid  equipment,  refreshments,  lounge  and  writing- 
rooms,  and  with  simple  services  on  Sunday.  This  boat 
commenced  then  and  there,  and  was  run  for  some  years 
imder  Captain  Skiff;  till  she  made  way  for  the  present 
homely  little  Fishermen's  Institute  exactly  across  the 
road  from  the  docks  before  you  came  to  the  saloons. 

I  shall  not  soon  forget  our  first  view  of  the  cliffs  of  the 
southern  coast  of  Iceland.  We  had  called  at  Thorshaven 


184  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

in  the  Faroe  group  to  see  what  we  could  learn  of  the 
boats  fishing  near  Rockall;  but  none  were  there  at  the 
time.  As  we  had  no  chronometers  on  our  own  boat  we 
were  quite  unable  to  tell  our  longitude  —  a  very  much- 
needed  bit  of  information,  for  we  had  had  fog  for  some 
days,  and  anyhow  none  of  us  knew  anything  about  the 
coast. 

We  brought  up  under  the  shadow  of  the  mighty  cliffs 
and  were  debating  our  whereabouts,  when  we  saw  an 
English  sailing  trawler  about  our  own  size,  with  his  nets 
out  close  in  under  the  land.  So  we  threw  out  our  boat  and 
boarded  him  for  information.  He  proved  to  be  a  Grimsby 
skipper,  and  we  received  the  usual  warm  reception  which 
these  Yorkshire  people  know  so  well  how  to  give.  But  to 
my  amazement  he  was  unable  to  afford  us  the  one  thing 
which  we  really  desired.  "I've  been  coming  this  way, 
man  and  boy,  for  forty  years,"  he  assured  me.  "But  I 
can't  read  the  chart,  and  I  knows  no  more  of  the  lay  of 
the  land  than  you  does  yourself.  I  don't  use  no  chart 
beyond  what's  in  my  head." 

With  this  we  were  naturally  not  content,  so  we  sent 
back  to  the  boat  for  our  own  sheet  chart  to  try  and  get 
more  satisfactory  information.  But  when  it  lay  on  the 
table  in  this  old  shellback's  cabin  all  he  did  was  to  put 
down  on  it  a  huge  and  horny  thumb  that  was  nearly 
large  enough  to  cover  the  whole  historic  island,  and 
"guess  we  were  somewhere  just  about  here." 

Our  cruise  carried  us  all  round  the  island  —  the  larger 
part  of  our  time  being  spent  off  the  Vestmann  Islands 
and  the  mouth  of  Brede  Bugt,  the  large  bay  in  which 
Reikyavik  lies.  It  was  off  these  islands  that  Eric  the  Red 
threw  his  flaming  sticks  into  the  sea.  The  first  brand 
which  alighted  on  the  land  directed  him  where  to  locate 
his  new  headquarters.  Reikyavik  means  "smoking  vil- 


IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES  185 

lage,"  so  called  from  the  vapours  of  the  hot  streams 
which  come  out  of  the  ground  near  by. 

There  is  no  night  on  the  coast  in  summer;  and  even 
though  we  were  a  Mission  ship  we  found  it  a  real  diffi- 
culty to  keep  tab  of  Sundays.  The  first  afternoon  that 
I  went  visiting  aboard  a  large  trawler,  the  extraordinary 
number  of  fish  and  the  specimens  of  unfamiliar  varieties 
kept  me  so  interested  that  I  lost  all  count  of  time,  and 
when  at  last  hunger  prompted  me  to  look  at  my  watch  I 
found  that  it  was  exactly  1.30  a.m. 

At  that  time  so  many  plaice  and  flatfish  were  caught 
at  every  haul,  and  they  were  so  much  more  valuable  than 
cod  and  haddock,  that  it  was  customary  not  to  burden 
the  vessel  on  her  long  five  days'  journey  to  market  with 
round  fish  at  all.  These  were,  however,  hauled  up  so 
rapidly  to  the  surface  from  great  depths  that  they  had 
no  time  to  accommodate  the  tension  in  their  swimming 
bladders  to  the  diminished  pressure,  with  the  result  that 
when  thrown  overboard  they  were  all  left  swimming 
upside  down.  A  pathetic  wake  of  white-bellied  fish  would 
stretch  away  for  half  a  mile  behind  the  vessel,  over  which 
countless  screaming  gulls  and  other  birds  were  fighting. 
A  sympathy  for  their  horribly  unprotected  helplessness 
always  left  an  uneasy  sinking  feeling  at  the  pit  of  my 
own  stomach.  The  waste  has,  however,  righted  itself  in 
the  course  of  years  by  the  simple  process  of  an  increasing 
scarcity  of  the  species,  making  it  pay  to  save  all  haddock, 
cod,  hake,  ling,  and  other  fish  good  for  food,  formerly  so 
ruthlessly  cast  away. 

One  had  many  interesting  experiences  in  this  voyage, 
some  of  which  have  been  of  no  small  value  subsequently. 
But  the  best  lesson  was  the  optimism  and  contentment 
of  one's  fellows,  who  had  apparently  so  few  of  the  things 
that  only  tyrannize  the  lives  of  those  who  live  for  them. 


186  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

They  were  a  simple,  kindly,  helpful  people,  living  in  a 
country  barren  and  frigid  beyond  all  others,  with  no 
trees  except  in  one  extreme  comer  of  the  island.  The 
cows  were  literally  fed  on  salt  codfish  and  the  tails  of 
whales,  and  the  goats  grazed  on  the  roofs  of  the  houses, 
where  existed  the  only  available  grass.  There  were  dry, 
hard,  and  almost  larval  deposits  over  the  whole  surface 
of  the  land  which  is  not  occupied  by  perpetual  snow  and 
ice.  The  hot  springs  which  abound  in  some  regions  only 
suggest  a  forlorn  effort  on  the  part  of  Nature  at  the  last 
moment  to  save  the  situation.  The  one  asset  of  the  coun- 
try is  its  fisheries,  and  of  these  the  whale  and  seal  fish- 
eries were  practically  handed  over  to  Norwegians;  while 
large  French  and  English  boats  fell  like  wolves  on  the 
fish,  which  the  poor  natives  had  no  adequate  means  of 
securing  for  themselves. 

We  were  fishing  one  day  in  Seyde  Fjord  on  the  east 
coast,  when  suddenly  with  much  speed  and  excitement 
the  great  net  was  hauled,  and  we  started  with  several 
other  trawlers  to  dash  pell-mell  for  the  open  sea.  The 
alarm  of  masts  and  smoke  together  on  the  horizon  had 
been  given  —  the  sign  manual  of  the  one  poor  Danish 
gunboat  which  was  supposed  to  control  the  whole  swarm 
of  far  smarter  little  pirates,  which  Hved  like  mosquitoes 
by  sucking  their  sustenance  from  others.  The  water  was 
as  a  general  rule  too  deep  outside  the  three-mile  limit 
for  legitimate  fishing. 

The  mention  of  Iceland  brings  to  every  one's  mind 
the  name  of  Pierre  Loti.  We  saw  many  of  the  "p^cheurs 
d'islande"  whom  he  so  effectively  portrays;  and  often 
felt  sorry  enough  for  them,  fishing  as  they  still  were  from 
old  square-rigged  wind-jammers.  On  some  of  these  which 
had  been  months  on  the  voyage,  enough  green  weed  had 
grown  "to  feed  a  cow"  —  as  the  mate  put  it. 


IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES  187 

On  our  return  home  we  reported  the  need  of  a  Mission 
vessel  on  the  coast,  but  the  difficulty  of  her  being  where 
she  was  wanted  at  the  right  time,  over  such  an  extended 
fishery  ground,  was  very  considerable.  We  decided  that 
only  a  steam  hospital  trawler  would  be  of  any  real  value 
—  unless  a  small  cottage  hospital  could  be  started  in 
Seyde  Fjord,  to  which  the  sick  and  injured  could  be 
taken. 

It  was  now  thought  wise  that  I  should  take  a  holiday, 
and  thus  through  the  kindness  of  my  former  chief.  Sir 
Frederick  Treves,  then  surgeon  to  the  King,  whose  life 
he  had  been  the  means  of  saving,  I  found  myself  for  a 
time  his  guest  on  the  Scilly  Islands.  There  we  could 
divert  our  minds  from  our  different  occupations,  con- 
juring up  visions  of  heroes  like  Sir  Cloudesley  Shovel, 
who  lost  his  life  here,  and  of  the  scenes  of  daring  and  of 
death  that  these  beautiful  isles  out  in  the  Atlantic  have 
witnessed.  Nor  did  we  need  Charles  Kingsley  to  paint 
for  us  again  the  visit  of  Angus  Lee  and  Salvation  Yeo, 
for  Sir  Frederick,  as  his  book,  "The  Cradle  of  the  Deep," 
shows,  is  a  past-master  in  buccaneer  lore.  Besides  that 
we  had  with  us  his  nephew,  the  famous  novel  writer, 
A.  E.  W.  Mason. 

Treves,  with  his  usual  insatiable  energy,  had  organ- 
ized a  grand  regatta  to  be  held  at  St.  Mary's,  at  which 
the  Governor  of  the  island,  the  Duke  of  Welhngton,  and 
a  host  of  visiting  big-wigs  were  to  be  present.  One  event 
advertised  as  a  special  attraction  was  a  life-saving  ex- 
hibition to  be  given  by  local  experts  from  the  judges' 
stage  opposite  the  grand  stand  on  the  pier.  This,  Mason 
and  I,  being  little  more  than  ornaments  in  the  other 
events,  decided  to  try  and  improve  upon.  Dressed  as  a 
somewhat  antiquated  lady,  just  at  the  psychological 
moment  Mason  fell  off  the  pier  head  with  a  loud  scream 


188  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

—  when,  disguised  as  an  aged  clergyman,  wildly  gestic- 
ulating, and  cramming  my  large  beaver  hat  hard  down 
on  my  head,  I  dived  in  to  rescue  him.  A  real  scene  en- 
sued. We  were  dragged  out  with  such  energy  that  the 
lady  lost  her  skirt,  and  on  reaching  the  pier  fled  for  the 
boat-house  clad  only  in  a  bonnet  and  bodice  over  a 
bathing-suit.  Although  the  local  press  wrote  up  the 
affair  as  genuine,  the  secret  somehow  leaked  out,  and  we 
had  to  make  our  bow  at  the  prize  distribution  the  follow- 
ing evening. 

Only  parts  of  the  winter  seasons  could  be  devoted  to 
raising  money.  The  general  Mission  budget  had  to  be 
taken  care  of  as  well  as  the  special  funds;  besides  which 
one  had  to  superintend  the  North  Sea  work.  Thus  the 
summer  of  1897  was  spent  in  Iceland  as  above  described, 
and  some  of  the  winter  in  tjie  North  Sea.  The  spring, 
summer,  and  part  of  the  fall  of  1898  were  occupied  by 
the  long  Irish  trip,  which  established  work  among  the 
spring  herring  and  mackerel  men  from  Crookhaven. 

On  leaving  England  for  one  of  these  North  Sea  trips  I 
was  delayed  and  missed  the  hospital  ship,  so  that  later 
I  was  obUged  to  transfer  to  her  on  the  high  seas  from  the 
little  cutter  which  had  kindly  carried  me  out  to  the 
fishing  grounds.  Friends  had  been  good  enough  to  give 
me  several  little  delicacies  on  my  departure,  and  I  had, 
moreover,  some  especially  cherished  personal  possessions 
which  I  desired  to  have  with  me  on  the  voyage.  These 
choice  treasures  consisted  of  some  eggs,  a  kayak,  a 
kodak,  a  chronometer,  and  a  leg  of  mutton !  After  I  was 
safely  aboard  the  Mission  hospital  ship  I  foimd  to  my 
chagrin  that  in  my  anxiety  to  transfer  the  eggs,  the 
kayak,  the  kodak,  the  chronometer,  and  especially  the 
leg  of  mutton  to  the  Albert,  I  had  forgotten  my  personal 
clothing.  I  appreciated  the  fact  that  a  soaking  meant  a 


IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES  189 

serious  matter,  as  I  had  to  stay  in  bed  till  my  things, 
which  were  drenched  during  my  passage  in  the  small 
boat,  were  dry  again. 

It  was  on  this  same  voyage  that  a  man,  badly  dam- 
aged, sent  off  for  a  doctor.  It  was  a  dirty  dark  morning, 
"thick  o'  rain,"  and  a  nasty  sea  was  running,  but  we 
were  really  glad  of  a  chance  of  doing  anything  to  re- 
lieve the  monotony.  So  we  booted  and  oil-skinned,  sou'- 
westered  and  life-jacketed,  till  we  looked  like  Tweedle- 
dum and  Tweedledee,  and  felt  much  as  I  expect  a 
German  student  does  when  he  is  bandaged  and  padded 
till  he  can  hardly  move,  preparatory  to  his  first  duel. 
The  boat  was  launched  and  eagerly  announcing  the  fact 
by  banging  loudly  and  persistently  on  the  Albert's  side. 
Our  two  lads,  Topsy  and  Sam,  were  soon  in  the  boat, 
adopting  the  usual  North  Sea  recipe  for  transit:  (1)  Lie 
on  the  rail  full  length  so  as  not  to  get  your  legs  and 
hands  jammed.  (2)  Wait  till  the  boat  bounces  in  some- 
where below  you.  (3)  Let  go!  It  is  not  such  a  painful 
process  as  one  might  imagine,  especially  when  one  is  be- 
padded  as  we  were.  The  stretcher  was  now  handed  in, 
and  a  bag  of  splints  and  bandages.  "All  gone!"  shouted 
simultaneously  the  mate  and  crew,  who  had  risked  a 
shower  bath  on  deck  to  see  us  off;  and  after  a  vicious 
little  crack  from  the  Albert's  quarter  as  we  dropped 
astern,  we  found  ourselves  rushing  away  before  the 
rolling  waters,  experiencing  about  the  same  sensation 
one  can  imagine  a  young  sea-gull  feels  when  he  begins 
to  fly. 

While  the  skipper  was  at  work  in  the  tobacco  locker 
one  morning  he  heard  a  fisherman  say  that  he  had  taken 
poison. 

"Where  did  you  get  it?" 

"I  got  it  from  the  Albert." 


190  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

"Who  gave  it  to  you?" 

"Skipper "  mentioning  the  skipper's  name. 

At  this  the  skipper  came  out  trembHng,  wondering 
what  he  had  done  wrong  now. 

"Well,  you  see  it  was  this  way.  Our  skipper  had  a  bad 
leg,  so  as  I  was  going  aboard  for  some  corf  mixture,  he 
just  arst  me  to  get  him  a  drop  of  something  to  rub  in. 
Well,  the  skipper  here  gives  me  a  bottle  of  red  liniment 
for  our  skipper's  leg,  and  a  big  bottle  of  corf  mixture  for 
me,  but  by  mistake  I  drinks  the  liniment  and  gave  the 
corf  mixture  to  our  skipper  to  rub  in  his  leg.  I  only  foimd 
out  that  there  yesterday,  so  I  knew  I  were  poisoned,  and 
I  've  been  lying  up  ever  since." 

"How  long  ago  did  you  get  the  medicine  ?" 

"About  a  fortnight." 

This  man  had  got  it  into  his  head  that  he  was  poisoned, 
and  nothing  on  earth  would  persuade  him  to  the  contrary, 
so  he  was  put  to  bed  in  the  hospital.  For  three  meals  he 
had  nothing  but  water  and  a  dose  of  castor  oil.  By  the 
next  time  dinner  came  round  the  patient  really  began  to 
think  he  was  on  the  mend,  and  remarked  that  "he  began 
to  feel  real  hungry  like."  It  was  just  marvellous  how 
much  better  he  was  before  tea.  He  went  home  to  his  old 
smack,  cured,  and  greatly  impressed  with  the  capacity 
of  the  medical  profession. 

The  first  piece  of  news  that  reached  us  in  the  spring 
was  that  the  Sir  Donald  had  been  found  frozen  in  the 
floe  ice  far  out  on  the  Atlantic.  No  one  was  on  board 
her,  and  there  was  little  of  any  kind  in  her,  but  even  the 
hardy  crew  of  Newfoundland  sealers  who  found  her,  as 
they  wandered  over  the  floating  ice-fields  in  search  of 
seals,  did  not  fail  to  appreciate  the  weird  and  romantic 
suggestions  of  a  derelict  Mission  steamer,  keeping  her 
lonely  watch  on  that  awful,  deathlike  waste.  She  had 


IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES  191 

been  left  at  Assizes  Harbour,  usually  an  absolutely  safe 
haven  of  rest.  But  she  was  not  destined  to  end  her 
chequered  career  so  peacefully,  for  the  Arctic  ice  came 
surging  in  and  froze  fast  to  her  devoted  sides,  then  bore 
her  bodily  into  the  open  sea,  as  if  to  give  her  a  fitting 
burial.  The  sealing  ship  Ranger  passed  her  a  friendly 
rope,  and  she  at  length  felt  the  joyful  life  of  the  rolling 
ocean  beneath  her  once  more,  and  soon  lay  safely  en- 
sconced in  the  harbour  at  St.  John's.  Here  she  was  sold 
by  auction,  and  part  of  the  proceeds  divided  as  her 
ransom  to  her  plucky  salvors. 

The  money  which  could  be  especially  devoted  to  the 
new  steamer  for  Labrador,  over  and  above  the  general 
expenses,  was  not  forthcoming  until  1899,  when  the 
contract  for  building  the  ship  was  given  to  a  firm  at 
Dartmouth  in  Devon.  The  chief  donor  of  the  new  boat 
was  again  Lord  Strathcona,  after  whom  she  was  subse- 
quently named. 

On  June  27,  1899,  the  Strathcona  was  launched,  and 
christened  by  Lady  Curzon-Howe.  When  the  word  was 
given  to  let  go,  without  the  slightest  hitch  or  roll  the  ship 
slid  steadily  down  the  ways  into  the  water.  The  band 
played  "Eternal  Father,"  "God  save  the  Queen,"  and 
"Life  on  the  Ocean  Wave."  Lord  Curzon-Howe  was 
formerly  commodore  upon  the  station  embracing  the 
Newfoundland  and  Labrador  coast.  Lord  Strathcona 
regretted  his  enforced  absence  and  sent  "Godspeed"  to 
the  new  steamer. 

She  arrived  at  Gorleston  July  18,  proving  an  excellent 
sea-boat,  with  light  coal  consumption.  She  is  larger  than 
the  vessel  in  which  Drake  sailed  round  the  world,  or 
Dampier  raided  the  Spanish  Main,  or  than  the  Speedy, 
which  Earl  Dundonald  made  the  terror  of  the  French 
and  Spanish. 


192  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

In  the  fall  of  1899  the  hull  of  the  Strathcona  was  com- 
pletely finished,  and  I  brought  her  round,  an  empty  shell, 
to  fit  her  up  at  our  Yarmouth  wharf;  after  which,  in  com- 
pany with  a  young  Oxford  friend,  Alfred  Beattie,  we  left 
for  the  Labrador,  crossing  to  Tilt  Cove,  Newfoundland, 
direct  from  Swansea  in  an  empty  copper  ore  tanker,  the 
Kilmorack.  On  this  I  was  rated  as  purser  at  twenty-five 
cents  for  the  trip.  Most  tramps  can  roll,  but  an  empty 
tanker  going  west  against  prevailing  winds  in  the  "roar- 
ing forties"  can  certainly  give  points  to  the  others.  Her 
slippery  iron  decks  and  the  involuntary  sideways  ex- 
cursions into  the  scuppers  still  spring  into  my  mind  when 
a  certain  Psalm  comes  round  in  the  Church  calendar, 
with  its  "that  thy  footsteps  slip  not."  We  were  a  little 
delayed  by  what  is  known  as  wind- jamming,  and  we 
used  to  kill  time  by  playing  tennis  in  the  huge  empty 
hold.  This  occupation,  under  the  circumstances,  supplied 
every  kind  of  diversion. 

The  mine  at  Tilt  Cove  is  situated  in  a  hole  in  the  huge 
headland  which  juts  out  far  into  the  Atlantic,  in  the 
northern  end  of  Newfoundland.  Communication  in  these 
days  was  very  meagre.  No  vessel  would  be  available  for 
us  to  get  North  for  a  fortnight.  It  so  happened,  however, 
that  the  Company's  doctor  had  long  been  waiting  a 
chance  to  get  married,  but  his  contract  never  allowed 
him  to  leave  the  mine  without  a  medical  man  while  it 
was  working.  I  therefore  found  myself  welcomed  with 
open  arms,  and  incidentally  practising  in  his  place  the 
very  next  day  —  he  having  skipped  in  a  boat  after  his 
bride.  The  exchange  had  been  ratified  by  the  captain  of 
the  mine  on  the  assurance  that  I  would  not  leave  before 
he  returned.  It  was  absolutely  essential  that  I  should 
not  let  the  next  north-bound  steamer  go  by.  The  season 
was  already  far  advanced;  and  yet  when  the  day  on 


IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES  193 

which  she  was  due  arrived,  there  was  no  sign  of  the  doctor 
and  his  wife.  It  was  a  kind  of  Damon  and  Pythias  ex- 
perience —  only  Pythias  got  back  late  by  a  few  hours 
in  spite  of  all  his  efforts,  and  Damon  would  have  had  to 
pay  the  piper  if  the  captain  of  the  mine  had  not  per- 
mitted me  to  proceed. 

The  narrow  road  around  the  cavernous  basin  in  the 
cliffs  leaves  only  just  room  for  the  line  of  houses  between 
the  lake  in  the  middle  and  the  precipice  behind.  Only  a 
few  years  later  an  avalanche  overwhelmed  the  house  of 
Captain  Williams,  and  he  and  his  family  perished  in  it. 
During  the  days  I  was  at  the  mine  the  news  travelled  by 
grapevine  telegraph  that  the  Mission  doctor  from  Eng- 
land had  come  to  the  village,  and  every  one  took 
advantage  of  it.  The  plan  there  was  to  pay  so  much 
per  month,  well  or  ill,  for  the  doctor.  The  work  was 
easy  at  first,  but  by  the  time  I  left  every  living  being 
seemed  to  me  to  have  contracted  some  disease.  For  each 
succeeding  day  my  surgery  got  fuller,  until  on  the  last 
morning  even  the  yard  and  road  contained  waiting  pa- 
tients. Whose  fault  it  was  has  always  been  a  problem 
to  me;  but  it  added  a  fresh  reason  for  wishing  to  leave 
punctually,  so  that  one  might  not  risk  outliving  one's 
reputation. 

In  October,  1899,  I  wrote  to  my  mother:  "We  have 
just  steamed  into  Battle  Harbour  and  guns  and  flags 
gave  us  a  welcome  after  our  three  years'  absence.  The 
hospital  was  full  and  looked  splendid.  What  a  change 
from  the  day,  now  seven  years  ago,  that  we  first  landed 
and  had  only  a  partially  finished  house!  What  an  oasis 
for  patients  from  the  bleak  rocks  outside!  I  never  thought 
to  remain  so  long  in  this  country." 

Here  we  boarded  the  little  Mission  steamer,  but  no 
human  agency  is  perfect,  and  even  the  Julia  Sheriden 


194  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

had  her  faults.  Her  gait  on  this  fall  voyage  was  sugges- 
tive of  inebriety,  and  at  times  gave  rise  to  the  anxious 
sensations  one  experiences  when  one  sees  a  poor  victim 
of  the  saloon  returning  home  along  a  pavement  near 
much  traffic. 

While  in  England  we  had  received  letters  from  the 
north  coast  of  Newfoundland,  begging  us  to  again  in- 
clude their  shores  in  our  visits,  and  especially  to  establish 
a  definite  winter  station  at  St.  Anthony.  The  people 
claimed,  and  rightly,  to  be  very  poor.  One  man  with  a 
large  family,  whom  I  knew  well,  as  he  had  acted  guide 
for  me  on  hunting  expeditions,  wrote:  "Come  and  start 
a  station  here  if  you  can.  My  family  and  I  are  starving." 
Dr.  Aspland  wrote  that  every  one  was  strongly  in  favour 
of  our  taking  up  a  Mission  hospital  in  North  Newfoimd- 
land.  We  felt  that  we  should  certainly  reach  a  very  large 
number  of  people  whom  we  now  failed  to  touch,  and 
that  careful  inquiries  should  be  made. 

Life  on  the  French  shore  has  been  a  struggle  with  too 
many  families  to  keep  off  actual  starvation.  For  in- 
stance, one  winter  at  St.  Anthony  a  man  with  a  large 
family,  and  a  fine,  capable,  self-respecting  fellow,  was 
nine  days  without  tasting  any  flour  or  bread,  or  anything 
besides  roast  seal  meat.  Others  were  even  worse  off,  for 
this  man  was  a  keen  hunter,  and  with  his  rickety  old 
single-barrel,  boy's  muzzle-loading  gun  used  to  wander 
alone  far  out  over  the  frozen  sea,  with  an  empty  stomach 
as  well,  trying  to  get  a  seal  or  a  bird  for  his  family.  At 
last  he  shot  a  square  flipper  seal  and  dragged  it  home. 
The  rumour  of  his  having  killed  it  preceded  his  arrival, 
and  even  while  skinning  it  a  crowd  of  hungry  men  were 
waiting  for  their  share  of  the  fat.  Not  that  any  was  due 
to  them,  but  here  there  is  a  deHghtful  semi-community 
of  goods. 


IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLES  195 

Fish  was  then  only  fetching  two  or  three  dollars  a 
hundredweight,  salted  and  dried.  The  price  of  necessities 
depended  on  the  conscience  of  the  individual  supplier 
and  the  ignorance  of  the  people.  The  truck  system  was 
universal;  thrift  at  a  discount  —  and  the  sin  of  Ananias 
an  all  too  common  one;  that  is,  taking  supplies  from  one 
man  and  returning  to  him  only  part  of  the  catch.  The 
people  in  the  north  end  of  Newfoundland  and  Labrador 
were  very  largely  illiterate;  the  sectarian  schools  split  up 
the  grants  for  teachers  —  as  they  still  most  unfortunately 
do  —  and  miserable  salaries,  permitting  teachers  only 
for  a  few  months  at  a  time,  were  the  rule. 

I  had  once  spent  a  fortnight  at  St.  Anthony,  having 
taken  refuge  there  in  the  Princess  May  when  I  was  sup- 
posed to  be  lost  by  those  who  were  cut  ofif  from  communi- 
cation with  us.  I  had  also  looked  in  there  each  summer 
to  see  a  few  patients.  My  original  idea  was  to  get  a  winter 
place  estabhshed  for  our  Indian  Harbour  staff,  and  I  pro- 
posed opening  up  there  each  October  when  Indian  Har- 
bour closed,  and  closing  in  June  when  navigation  was 
reopened.  Battle  Harbour  again  accessible,  and  when  the 
man-of-war  doctors  are  more  on  this  section  of  the  coast. 

The  snow  was  deep  on  the  ground  long  before  our 
voyage  ended.  There  is  always  a  romantic  charm  about 
cruising  in  the  fall  of  the  year  on  the  Labrador.  The  long 
nights  and  the  heavy  gales  add  to  the  interest  of  the 
day's  work.  The  shelter  of  the  islands  becomes  a  positive 
joy;  the  sense  of  safety  in  the  harbours  and  fjords  is  as 
real  a  pleasure  as  the  artificial  attractions  of  civilization. 
The  tang  of  the  air,  the  young  ice  that  makes  every  night, 
the  fantastic  midnight  dances  of  the  November  auroras 
in  the  winter  sky,  all  make  one  forget  the  petty  worries 
of  the  daily  round. 

As  Beattie  agreed  to  stay  with  me  it  was  with  real 


196  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

keenness  to  sample  a  sub-arctic  winter  that  in  Xovember 
we  disembarked  from  the  Julia  Sheriden.  We  made  only 
the  simplest  preparations,  renting  a  couple  of  rooms  in 
the  chief  trader's  house  and  hiring  my  former  guide  as 
dog-driver. 


CHAPTER  XI 

FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY 

Not  one  of  the  many  who  have  wintered  with  us  in  the 
North  has  failed  to  love  our  frozen  season.  To  me  it  was 
one  long  delight.  The  dog-driving,  the  intimate  relation- 
ships with  the  people  on  whom  one  was  so  often  abso- 
lutely dependent,  the  opportunity  to  use  to  the  real  help 
of  good  people  in  distress  the  thousand  and  one  small 
things  which  we  had  learned  —  all  these  made  the  knowl- 
edge that  we  were  shut  off  from  the  outside  world  rather 
a  pleasure  than  a  cause  for  regret. 

Calls  for  the  doctor  were  constant.  I  spent  but  three 
Sundays  at  home  the  whole  time,  and  my  records  showed 
fifteen  hundred  miles  covered  with  dogs. 

The  Eskimo  dog  is  so  strong  and  enduring  that  he  is 
the  doyen  of  traction  power  in  the  North,  when  long 
distances  and  staying  quahties  are  required.  But  for 
short,  sharp  dashes  of  twenty  to  thirty  miles  the  lighter 
built  and  more  vivacious  Straits  dog  is  the  speedier  and 
certainly  the  less  wolfish.  We  have  attempted  cross- 
breeding our  somewhat  squat-legged  Eskimo  dogs  with 
Kentucky  wolf  hounds,  to  combine  speed  with  endurance. 
The  mail-carrier  from  Fullerton  to  Winnipeg  found  that 
combination  very  desirable.  With  us,  however,  it  did  not 
succeed.  The  pups  were  lank  and  weedy  and  not  nearly 
so  capable  as  the  ordinary  Straits  breed. 

The  real  Labrador  dog  is  a  very  slightly  modified  wolf. 
A.  good  specimen  stands  two  feet  six  inches,  or  even  two 
feet  eight  inches  high  at  the  shoulder,  measures  over  six 
feet  six  inches  from  the  tip  of  the  nose  to  the  tip  of  the 
tail,  and  will  scale  a  hundred  pounds.  The  hair  is  thick 


198  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  straight;  the  ears  are  pointed  and  stand  directly  up. 
The  large,  bushy  tail  curves  completely  over  on  to  the 
back,  and  is  always  carried  erect.  The  colour  is  generally 
tawny,  like  that  of  a  gray  wolf,  with  no  distinctive  mark- 
ings. The  general  resemblance  to  wolves  is  so  great  that 
at  Davis  Inlet,  where  wolves  come  out  frequently  in 
winter,  the  factor  has  seen  his  team  mixed  with  a  pack 
of  wolves  on  the  beach  in  front  of  the  door,  and  yet 
could  not  shoot,  being  imable  to  distinguish  one  from 
the  other.  The  Eskimo  dog  never  barks,  but  howls 
exactly  Hke  a  wolf,  in  sitting  posture  with  the  head  up- 
turned. The  Labrador  wolf  has  never  been  known  to 
kill  a  man,  but  during  the  years  I  have  spent  in  that 
country  I  have  known  the  dogs  to  kill  two  children 
and  one  man,  and  to  eat  the  body  of  another.  Our  dogs 
have  little  or  no  fear,  and  unlike  the  wolves,  will  un- 
hesitatingly attack  even  the  largest  polar  bear. 

No  amount  of  dry  cold  seems  to  affect  the  dogs.  At 
50°  F.  below  zero,  a  dog  will  lie  out  on  the  ice  and  sleep 
without  danger  of  frost-bite.  He  may  climb  out  of  the 
sea  with  ice  forming  all  over  his  fur,  but  he  seems  not 
to  mind  one  iota.  I  have  seen  his  breath  freeze  so  over 
his  face  that  he  had  to  rub  the  coating  off  his  eyes  with 
his  paws  to  enable  him  to  see  the  track. 

The  dogs  have  a  wonderful  instinct  for  finding  their 
way  under  almost  insurmoimtable  difficulties,  and  they 
have  oftentimes  been  the  means  of  saving  the  lives  of 
their  masters.  Once  I  was  driving  a  distance  of  seventy 
miles  across  country.  The  path  was  untravelled  for 
the  winter,  and  was  only  a  direction,  not  being  cut 
or  blazed.  The  leading  dog  had  been  once  across  the 
previous  year  with  the  doctor.  The  "going"  had  then 
been  very  bad;  with  snow  and  fog  the  journey  had 
taken  three  days.  A  large  part  of  the  way  lay  across 


FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY      199 

wide  frozen  lakes,  and  then  through  woods.  As  I  had 
never  been  that  way  before  I  had  to  leave  it  to  the  dog. 
Without  a  single  fault,  as  far  as  we  knew,  he  took  us 
across,  and  we  accomplished  the  whole  journey  in  twelve 
hours,  including  one  and  a  half  hours  for  rest  and  lunch. 

The  distance  travelled  and  the  average  speed  at- 
tained depends  largely  on  other  factors  than  the  dog 
power.  We  have  covered  seventy-five  miles  in  a  day  with 
comfort;  we  have  done  five  with  difficulty.  Ordinary 
speed  would  be  six  miles  an  hour,  but  I  once  did  twenty- 
one  miles  in  two  hours  and  a  quarter  over  level  ice. 
Sails  can  sometimes  be  used  with  advantage  on  the 
komatik  as  an  adjunct.  The  whole  charm  of  dog-team 
driving  Kes  in  its  infinite  variety  of  experiences,  the 
personal  study  of  each  dog,  and  the  need  for  one's 
strength,  courage,  and  resourcefulness. 

South  and  north  of  the  little  village  of  St.  Anthony 
where  we  had  settled  were  other  similar  villages;  and 
we  decided  that  we  could  make  a  round  tour  every 
second  month  at  least.  We  soon  found,  however,  a  great 
difficulty  in  getting  started,  because  we  always  had 
some  patients  in  houses  near  about,  whom  we  felt  that 
we  could  not  leave.  So  we  selected  a  motherly  woman, 
whom  we  had  learned  that  we  could  trust  to  obey  or- 
ders and  not  act  on  her  own  initiative  and  judgment, 
and  trained  her  as  best  we  could  to  deal  with  some  of 
these  sick  people.  Then,  having  borrowed  and  outfitted 
a  couple  of  rooms  in  a  friend 's  house,  we  left  our  serious 
cases  under  her  care,  and  started  for  a  month's  travel 
with  all  the  optimism  of  youth. 

Weight  on  your  komatik  is  a  vital  question,  and  not 
knowing  for  what  you  may  be  called  upon,  makes  the 
outfitting  an  art.  I  give  the  experience  of  years.  The 
sledge  should  be  eleven  feet  long.  Its  runners  should  be 


200  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

constructed  of  black  spruce  grown  in  the  Far  North 
where  wood  grows  slowly  and  is  very  tough,  and  yet 
quite  light.  The  runners  should  be  an  inch  thick,  eleven 
inches  high,  and  about  twenty-six  inches  apart,  the 
bottoms  rising  at  the  back  half  an  inch,  as  well  as  at 
the  front  toward  the  horns.  The  laths  are  fastened 
on  with  alternate  diagonal  lashings,  are  two  inches 
wide,  and  close  together.  Such  a  komatik  will  "work" 
like  a  snake,  adapting  itself  to  the  inequalities  of  the 
groimd,  and  will  not  spread  or  "buckle."  Long  nails 
are  driven  up  right  through  the  runners,  and  clinched 
on  the  top  to  prevent  splitting.  The  runners  should  be 
shod  with  spring  steel,  one  inch  wide;  and  a  second 
runner,  two  and  a  half  inches  wide,  may  be  put  be- 
tween the  lower  one  and  the  wood,  to  hold  up  the  sledge 
when  the  snow  is  soft.  Thus  one  has  on  both  a  skate 
and  a  snowshoe  at  once.  The  dogs'  traces  should  be 
of  skin  and  fastened  with  toggles  or  buttons  to  the  bow- 
line. Dog  food  must  be  distributed  along  the  komatik 
trail  in  summer  —  though  the  people  will  make  great 
sacrifices  to  feed  "the  Doctor's  team." 

Clothing  must  be  light;  to  perspire  in  cold  weather 
is  unpardonable,  for  it  will  freeze  inside  your  clothes 
at  night.  Fortunately  warmth  depends  only  on  keeping 
heat  in;  and  we  find  an  impervious,  light,  dressed  can- 
vas best.  The  kossak  should  be  made  with,  so  to  speak, 
no  neck  through  which  the  heat  which  one  produces 
can  leak  out.  The  headpiece  must  be  attached  to  the 
tunic,  which  also  clips  tight  round  the  wrists  and  round 
the  waist  to  retain  the  heat.  The  edges  may  be  bound 
with  fur,  especially  about  the  hood,  so  as  to  be  soft  and 
tight  about  the  face,  and  to  keep  the  air  out.  The  Es- 
kimo cuts  his  own  hair  so  as  to  fill  that  function.  Light 
sealskin  boots  are  best  for  all  weathers,  but  in  very  cold. 


FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY      201 

dry  seasons,  deerskin  dressed  very  soft  is  warmer.  The 
skin  boot  should  be  sewn  with  sinew  which  swells  in 
water  and  thus  keeps  the  stitches  water-tight.  These 
skin  boots  are  made  by  the  Eskimo  women  who  chew 
the  edges  of  the  skin  to  make  them  soft  before  sewing 
them  with  deer  sinew.  The  little  Eskimo  girls  on  the 
North  Labrador  coast  are  proficient  in  the  art  of  chewing, 
as  they  are  brought  up  from  childhood  to  help  their 
mothers  in  this  way,  the  women  having  invariably  lost 
their  teeth  at  a  very  early  age. 

A  light  rifle  should  always  be  lashed  on  the  komatik, 
as  a  rabbit,  a  partridge,  or  a  deer  gives  often  a  light  to 
the  eyes  with  the  fresh  proteids  they  afford,  like  Jona- 
than's wild  honey.  In  these  temperatures,  with  the 
muscular  exercise  required,  my  strictest  of  vegetarian 
friends  should  permit  us  to  bow  in  the  House  of  Rimmon. 
One  day  while  crossing  a  bay  I  noticed  some  seals 
popping  up  their  heads  out  of  the  water  beyond  the 
ice  edge.  I  had  a  fine  leading  dog  bearing  the  unroman- 
tic  name  of  Podge,  and  pure  white  in  colour.  But  he 
was  an  excellent  water  dog,  trained  not  only  to  go  for 
birds,  but  to  dive  under  water  for  sunken  seals.  Owing 
to  their  increasing  fat  in  winter,  seals  as  a  rule  float, 
though  they  invariably  sink  in  summer.  On  this  particu- 
lar occasion,  having  hitched  up  the  team  we  crept  out  to 
the  ice  edge,  Podge  following  at  my  heels.  Lying  still 
on  the  ice,  and  just  occasionally  lifting  and  waggling 
one's  leg  when  the  seal  put  up  his  head,  he  mistook 
one  for  a  basking  brother,  and  being  a  very  curious 
animal,  he  again  dived,  and  came  up  a  few  feet  away. 
We  shot  two,  both  of  which  Podge  dived  after  and  re- 
trieved, to  the  unbounded  joy  both  of  ourselves  and  his 
four-footed  chums,  who  more  than  gladly  shared  the 
carcasses  with  him  later. 


202  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

A  friend,  returning  from  an  island,  was  jogging  quietly 
along  on  the  bay  ice,  when  his  team  suddenly  went 
wild.  A  bear  had  crossed  close  ahead,  and  before  he 
could  unlash  his  rifle  the  komatik  had  dashed  right 
onto  the  animal,  who,  instead  of  running,  stood  up  and 
showed  fight.  The  team  were  all  around  him,  rapidly 
snarling  themselves  up  in  their  own  traces.  He  had  just 
time  to  draw  his  hunting  knife  across  the  traces  and  so 
save  the  dogs,  caring  much  more  for  them  than  he  did 
for  the  prey.  Whilst  his  dogs  held  the  attention  of 
the  bear,  he  was  able,  though  only  a  few  feet  away,  to 
unlash  his  rifle  at  his  leisure,  and  very  soon  ended  the 
conflict. 

A  gun,  however,  is  a  temptation,  even  to  a  doctor, 
and  nearly  cost  one  of  my  colleagues  his  life.  He  was 
crossing  a  big  divide,  or  neck  of  land,  between  bays, 
and  was  twenty  miles  from  anywhere,  when  his  dogs 
took  the  trail  of  some  deer,  which  were  evidently  not 
far  off.  Being  short  of  fresh  food,  he  hitched  up  his 
team,  and  also  his  pilot's  team,  leaving  only  his  boy 
driver  in  charge,  while  the  men  pursued  the  caribou. 
He  enjoined  the  boy  very  strictly  not  to  move  on  any 
account.  By  an  odd  freak  a  sudden  snowstorm  swept 
out  of  a  clear  sky  just  after  they  left.  They  missed  their 
way,  and  two  days  later,  starving  and  tired  out,  they 
found  their  first  refuge,  a  small  house  many  miles  from 
the  spot  where  they  had  left  the  sledges.  When,  how- 
ever, they  sent  a  relief  team  to  find  the  komatiks,  they 
discovered  the  boy  still  "standing  by"  his  charge. 

When  crossing  wide  stretches  of  country  we  are  often 
obliged  to  camp  if  it  comes  on  dark.  It  is  quite  impossible 
to  navigate  rough  country  when  one  cannot  see  stumps, 
windfalls,  or  snags;  and  I  have  more  than  once,  while 
caught  in  a  forest  looking  for  our  tilt,  been  obhged  to 


FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY      203 

walk  ahead  with  a  light,  and  even  to  search  the  snow 
for  tracks  with  the  help  of  matches,  when  one's  torch 
has  carelessly  been  left  at  home.  On  one  occasion,  hav- 
ing stopped  om*  team  in  deep  snow  at  nightfall,  we  left 
it  in  the  woods  to  walk  out  to  a  village,  only  five  or  six 
miles  distant,  on  om*  snowshoes.  We  entirely  lost  our 
way,  and  ended  up  at  the  foot  of  some  steep  cliffs  which 
we  had  climbed  down,  thinking  that  our  destination 
lay  at  their  feet.  The  storm  of  the  day  had  broken  the 
sea  ice  from  the  land,  and  we  could  not  get  round  the 
base  of  the  cliffs,  though  we  could  see  the  village  lights 
twinkling  away,  only  a  mile  or  two  across  the  bay. 
Climbing  steep  hills  through  dense  woods  in  deep  snow 
in  the  dark  calls  for  some  endurance,  especially  as  a 
white  snow-bank  looks  like  an  open  space  through  the 
dark  trees.  I  have  actually  stuck  my  face  into  a  per- 
pendicular bluff,  thinking  that  I  was  just  coming  out 
into  the  open.  Oddly  enough,  when  after  much  struggling 
we  had  mounted  the  hill,  we  heard  voices,  and  suddenly 
met  two  men,  who  had  also  been  astray  all  day,  but 
now  knew  the  way  home.  They  were  "all  in"  for  want 
of  food,  and  preferred  camping  for  the  night.  A  good 
fire  and  some  chunks  of  sweet  cake  so  greatly  restored 
them,  however,  that  we  got  under  way  again  in  a  couple 
of  hours,  further  stimulated  to  do  so  by  the  bitter  cold, 
against  which,  in  the  dark,  we  could  not  make  ade- 
quate shelter.  Moreover,  we  had  perspired  with  the 
violent  exercise  and  our  clothes  were  freezing  from  the 
inside  out. 

You  must  always  carry  an  axe,  not  only  for  firewood, 
but  for  getting  water  —  unless  you  wish  to  boil  snow, 
which  is  a  slow  process,  and  apt  to  burn  your  kettle. 
Also  when  you  have  either  lost  the  trail  or  there  is  none, 
you  must  have  an  axe  to  clear  a  track  as  you  march 


204  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

ahead  of  your  dogs.  Then  there  is,  of  course,  the  un- 
fortunate question  of  food.  Buns  baked  with  chopped 
pork  in  them  give  one  fine  energy-producing  material, 
and  do  not  freeze.  A  sweet  hard  biscuit  is  made  on  the 
coast  which  is  excellent  in  one's  pocket.  Cocoa,  cooked 
pork  fat,  stick  chocolate,  are  all  good  to  have.  Our  sealers 
carry  dry  oatmeal  and  sugar  in  their  "nonny  bags," 
which,  mixed  with  snow,  assuage  their  thirst  and  hunger 
as  well.  Pork  and  beans  in  tins  are  good,  but  they  freeze 
badly.  I  have  boiled  a  tin  in  our  kettle  for  fifteen  minutes, 
and  then  found  a  lump  of  ice  in  the  middle  of  the  sub- 
stance when  it  was  turned  out  into  the  dish. 

Winter  travelling  on  this  coast  oftentimes  involves 
considerable  hardships,  as  when  once  our  doctor  lost 
the  track  and  he  and  his  men  had  to  spend  several  nights 
in  the  woods.  They  were  so  reduced  by  hunger  that  they 
were  obliged  to  chew  pieces  of  green  sealskin  which  they 
cut  from  their  boots  and  to  broil  their  skin  gloves  over 
a  fire  which  they  had  kindled. 

One  great  joy  which  comes  with  the  work  is  the  sym- 
pathy one  gets  with  the  really  poor,  whether  in  intelli- 
gence, physical  make-up,  or  worldly  assets.  One  learns 
how  simple  needs  and  simple  lives  preserve  simple  vir- 
tues that  get  lost  in  the  crush  of  advancing  civilization. 
Many  and  many  a  time  have  the  poor  people  by  the  way- 
side refused  a  penny  for  their  trouble.  On  one  occasion 
I  came  in  the  middle  of  the  night  to  a  poor  man 's  house. 
He  was  in  bed  and  the  lights  out,  and  it  was  bitter  cold. 
He  got  out  of  bed  in  a  trice  and  went  down  to  his  stage 
carrying  an  old  hurricane  lantern  to  feed  my  dogs,  while 
his  wife,  after  he  had  lit  a  fire  in  the  freezing  cold  room, 
busied  herself  making  me  some  cocoa.  Milk  and  sugar 
were  provided,  and  not  till  long  afterwards  did  I  know 
that  it  was  a  special  little  hoard  kept  for  visitors.  Later 


rmST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY       205 

I  was  sent  to  bed  —  quite  unaware  that  the  good  folk 
had  spent  the  first  part  of  the  night  in  it,  and  were  now 
themselves  on  the  neighbouring  floor.  Nor  would  a  sou's 
return  be  asked.  "It's  the  way  of  t'  coast,"  the  good 
fellow  assured  me. 

Another  time  my  host  for  the  night  had  gone  when  I 
rose  for  breakfast.  I  found  that  he  had  taken  the  road 
which  I  was  intending  to  travel  to  the  next  village,  some 
fourteen  miles  distant,  just  to  break  and  mark  a  trail 
for  us  as  we  did  not  know  the  way;  and  secondly  to 
carry  some  milk  and  sugar  to  "save  the  face"  of  my 
prospective  host  for  the  next  day,  who  had  "made  a 
bad  voyage"  that  year.  Still  another  time  no  less  than 
forty  men  from  Conche  marched  ahead  on  a  twenty- 
mile  track  to  make  it  possible  for  our  team  to  travel 
quickly  to  a  neighbouring  settlement. 

Often  I  have  thought  how  many  of  these  things  would 
I  do  for  my  poorer  friends.  We  who  speak  glibly  of  the 
need  of  love  for  our  neighbours  as  being  before  that  for 
ourselves,  would  we  share  a  bed,  a  room,  or  give  hos- 
pitality to  strangers  even  in  our  kitchens,  after  they 
had  awakened  us  in  the  middle  of  the  night  by  slinging 
snowballs  at  our  bedroom  windows? 

Que  day  that  winter  a  father  of  eight  children  sent 
in  from  a  neighbouring  island  for  immediate  help.  His 
gun  had  gone  off  while  his  hand  was  on  the  muzzle,  and 
practically  blown  it  to  pieces.  To  treat  him  ten  miles 
away  on  that  island  was  impossible,  so  we  brought  him 
in  for  operation.  To  stop  the  bleeding  he  had  plunged 
his  hand  into  a  flour  barrel  and  then  tied  it  up  in  a  bag, 
and  as  a  result  the  wounded  arm  was  poisoned  way  up 
above  the  elbow.  He  preferred  death  to  losing  his  right 
arm.  Day  and  night  for  weeks  our  nurse  tended  him,  as 
he  hovered  between  life  and  death  with  general  blood 


206  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

poisoning.  Slowly  his  fine  constitution  brought  him 
through,  and  at  last  a  secondary  operation  for  repair 
became  possible.  We  took  chances  on  bone-grafting  to 
form  a  hand;  and  he  was  left  with  a  flipper  like  a  seal's, 
able,  however,  to  oppose  one  long  index  finger  and  "nip 
a  line"  when  he  fished.  But  there  was  no  skin  for  it.  So 
Dr.  Beattie  and  I  shared  the  honours  of  supplying  some. 
Pat  —  for  that  was  his  name  —  has  been  a  veritable 
apostle  of  the  hospital  ever  since,  and  has  undoubtedly 
been  the  means  of  enabling  others  to  risk  the  danger 
of  our  suspected  proselytizing.  For  though  he  had  Eng- 
lish Episcopal  sldn  on  the  palm  of  his  hand  and  Scotch 
Presbyterian  skin  on  the  back,  the  rest  of  him  still  re- 
mained a  devout  Roman  Catholic. 

Another  somewhat  parallel  case  occurred  the  following 
year,  when  a  dear  old  Catholic  lady  was  hauled  fifty 
miles  over  the  snow  by  her  two  stalwart  sons,  to  have 
her  leg  removed  for  tubercular  disease  of  the  ankle.  She 
did  exceedingly  well,  and  the  only  puzzle  which  we 
could  not  solve  was  where  to  raise  the  necessary  him- 
dred  dollars  for  a  new  leg  —  for  her  disposition,  even 
more  than  her  necessity,  compelled  her  to  move  about. 
While  lecturing  that  winter  in  America,  I  asked  friends 
to  donate  to  me  any  of  their  old  legs  which  they  no 
longer  needed,  and  soon  I  found  myself  the  happy  pos- 
sessor of  two  good  wooden  limbs,  one  of  which  exactly 
suited  my  requirements.  A  departed  Methodist  had 
left  it,  and  the  wife's  clergyman,  a  Congregationalist, 
had  handed  it  to  me,  an  Episcopalian,  and  I  had  the 
joy  of  seeing  it  a  real  blessing  to  as  good  a  Roman  Ca- 
tholic as  I  know.  As  the  priest  says,  there  is  now  at  least 
one  Protestant  leg  established  in  his  parish. 

We  once  reached  a  house  at  midnight,  found  a  boy 
with  a  broken  thigh,  and  had  to  begin  work  by  thawing 


FIKST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY       207 

out  frozen  board  in  order  to  plane  it  for  splints,  then 
pad  and  fix  it,  and  finally  give  chloroform  on  the  kitchen 
table.  On  another  occasion  we  had  to  knock  down  a 
partition  in  a  tiny  cottage,  make  a  full-length  wooden 
bath,  pitching  the  seams  to  make  it  water-tight,  in  order 
to  treat  a  severe  cellulitis.  Now  it  would  be  a  maternity 
case,  now  a  dental  one,  now  a  gimshot  wound  or  an  axe 
cut  with  severed  tendons  to  adjust,  now  pneumonia, 
when  often  in  solitary  and  unlearned  homes,  we  would 
ourselves  do  the  nursing  and  especially  the  cooking, 
as  that  art  for  the  sick  is  entirely  uncultivated  on  the 
coast. 

The  following  winter  I  lectured  in  England  and  then 
crossed  in  the  early  spring  to  the  United  States  and  lec- 
tured both  there  and  in  Canada,  receiving  great  kind- 
ness and  much  help  for  the  work. 

As  I  have  stated  in  the  previous  chapter  we  had  raised, 
largely  through  the  generosity  of  Lord  Strathcona,  the 
money  for  a  suitable  little  hospital  steamer,  and  she 
had  been  built  to  our  design  in  England.  I  had  steamed 
her  round  to  our  fitting  yard  at  Great  Yarmouth,  and 
had  her  fitted  for  our  work  before  sailing.  While  I  was 
in  America,  my  old  Newfoundland  crew  went  across 
and  fetched  her  over,  so  that  June  found  us  once  more 
cruising  the  Labrador  coast. 

While  working  with  the  large  fleet  of  schooners,  which 
at  that  time  fished  in  August  and  September  from  Cape 
Mugford  to  Hudson  Bay  Straits,  I  visited  as  usual  the 
five  stations  of  the  Moravian  Brethren.  They  were 
looking  for  a  new  place  to  put  a  station,  and  at  their 
request  I  took  their  representative  to  Cape  Chidley  in 
the  Strathcona. 

This  northern  end  of  Labrador  is  extremely  interesting 
to  cruise.  The  great  Appalachian  Mountain  Range  runs 


208  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

out  here  right  to  the  water  edge,  and  forms  a  marvellous 
sea-front  of  embattled  cliffs  from  two  thousand  to  three 
thousand  feet  in  height.  The  narrow  passages  which 
here  and  there  run  far  into  the  mountains,  and  repre- 
sent old  valleys  scooped  out  by  ice  action,  are  dominated 
all  along  by  frowning  peaks,  whose  pointed  summits 
betray  the  fact  that  they  overtopped  the  ice  stream  in 
the  glacial  age.  The  sharp  precipices  and  weather-worn 
sides  are  picked  out  by  coloured  lichens,  and  tiny  cold- 
proof  Arctic  plants,  and  these,  with  the  deep  blue  water 
and  unknown  vistas  that  keep  constantly  opening  up 
as  one  steams  along  the  almost  fathomless  fjords,  afford 
a  fascination  beyond  measure. 

Once  before  in  the  Sir  Donald  we  had  tried  to  navi- 
gate the  narrow  run  that  cuts  off  the  island  on  which 
Cape  Chidley  stands  from  the  mainland  of  Labrador, 
but  had  missed  the  way  among  the  many  openings,  and 
only  noted  from  a  hilltop  the  course  we  should  have 
taken,  by  the  boiling  current  which  we  saw  below,  whose 
vicious  whirlpools  like  miniature  maelstroms  poured  like 
a  dashing  torrent  from  Ungava  Bay  into  the  Atlantic. 

It  was,  however,  with  our  hearts  somewhere  near  our 
mouths  that  we  made  an  attempt  to  get  through  this 
year,  for  we  knew  nothing  of  the  depth,  except  that  the 
Eskimos  had  told  us  that  large  icebergs  drove  through 
at  times.  We  could  steam  nine  knots,  and  we  essayed 
to  cover  the  tide,  which  we  found  against  us,  as  we 
neared  the  narrowest  part,  which  is  scarcely  one  hun- 
dred yards  wide.  The  current  carried  us  bodily  astern, 
however,  and  glad  enough  we  were  to  drive  stern  fore- 
most into  a  cove  on  one  side  and  find  thirteen  fathoms 
of  water  to  hold  on  in  till  the  tide  should  turn.  When 
at  last  it  did  turn,  and  got  under  way,  it  fairly  took  us 
in  its  teeth,  and  we  shot  through,  an  impotent  plaything 


FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY      209 

on  the  heaving  bosom  of  the  resistless  waters.  We  re- 
turned safely,  with  a  site  selected  and  a  fair  chart  of 
the  "Tickle"  (Grenfell  Tickle). 

When  winter  closed  in,  I  arranged  for  an  old  friend, 
a  clerk  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  to  stay  with  me 
at  St.  Anthony,  and  once  more  we  settled  down  in  rooms 
hired  in  a  cottage.  We  had  a  driver,  a  team  of  dogs,  and 
an  arrangement  with  a  paternal  Government  to  help 
out  by  making  an  allowance  of  twenty-five  cents  for 
medicine  for  such  patients  as  could  not  themselves  pay 
that  amount,  and  in  those  days  the  number  was  quite 
large. 

When  early  spring  came  the  hospital  question  re- 
vived. An  expedition  into  the  woods  was  arranged,  and 
with  a  hundred  men  and  thrice  as  many  dogs,  we  camped 
in  the  trees,  and  at  the  end  of  the  fortnight  came  home 
hauling  behind  us  the  material  for  a  thirty-six  by  thirty- 
six  hospital.  Being  entirely  new  to  us  it  proved  a  very 
happy  experience.  We  were  quartermasters  and  general 
providers.  Our  kitchen  was  dug  down  in  thick  woods 
through  six  feet  of  snow,  and  our  main  reliance  was 
on  boiled  "doughboys"  —  the  "sinkers"  among  which, 
with  a  slice  of  fat  pork  or  a  basin  of  bird  soup,  were 
as  popular  as  lobster  a  la  Newburg  at  Delmonico's  or 
Sherry's. 

The  next  summer  we  had  trouble  with  a  form  of  self- 
ishness which  I  have  always  heartily  hated  —  the  li- 
quor traflic.  Suppose  we  do  allow  that  a  man  has  a  right 
to  degrade  his  body  with  swallowing  alcohol,  he  cer- 
tainly has  no  more  right  to  lure  others  to  their  destruction 
for  money  than  a  filibuster  has  a  right  to  spend  his  money 
in  gunpowder  and  shoot  his  fellow  countrymen.  To  our 
great  chagrin  we  found  that  an  important  neighbour 
near  one  of  our  hospitals  was  selling  intoxicants  to  the 


210  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

people  —  girls  and  men.  One  girl  found  drunk  on  the 
hillside  brought  home  to  me  the  cost  of  this  man's  right 
to  "do  as  he  liked."  We  promptly  declared  war,  and  I 
thanked  God  who  had  made  "my  hands  to  war,  and 
my  fingers  to  fight"  —  when  that  is  the  only  way  to 
resist  the  Devil  successfully  and  to  hasten  the  kingdom 
of  peace. 

This  man  and  I  had  had  several  disagreements,  and 
I  had  been  warned  not  to  land  on  the  premises  on  pain 
of  being  "chucked  into  the  sea."  But  when  I  tested 
the  matter  out  by  landing  quite  alone  from  a  row- 
boat,  after  a  "few  wor-r-r-ds"  his  coast-born  hospi- 
tality overcame  him,  and  as  his  bell  sounded  the  dinner 
call,  he  promptly  invited  me  to  dine  with  him.  I  knew 
that  he  would  not  poison  the  food,  and  soon  we  were 
glowering  at  one  another  over  his  own  table  —  where 
his  painful  efforts  to  convince  me  that  he  was  right 
absolutely  demonstrated  the  exact  opposite. 

My  chance  came  that  summer.  We  were  steaming  to 
our  Northern  hospital  from  the  deep  bay  which  runs 
in  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  About  twenty  miles  from 
the  mouth  a  boat  hailed  us  out  of  the  darkness,  and  we 
stopped  and  took  aboard  a  wrecked  crew  of  three  men. 
They  had  struck  our  friend's  well-insured  old  steam 
launch  on  a  shoal  and  she  had  sunk  under  them.  We 
took  them  aboard,  boat  and  all,  wrote  down  carefully 
their  tale  of  woe,  and  then  put  the  steamer  about, 
pushed  as  near  the  wreck  as  we  dared  and  anchored. 
Her  skipper  came  forward  and  asked  me  what  I  in- 
tended doing,  and  I  told  him  I  was  going  to  survey  the 
wreck.  A  little  later  he  again  came  to  ask  permission  to 
go  aboard  the  wreck  to  look  for  something  he  had  for- 
gotten. I  told  him  certainly  not.  Just  before  sunrise  the 
watch  called  me  and  said  that  the  wrecked  crew  had 


FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY      211 

launched  their  boat,  and  were  rowing  toward  the  steamer. 
"Launch  ours  at  once,  and  drive  them  back"  was  an 
order  which  our  boys  obeyed  with  alacrity  and  zest.  It 
was  a  very  uneasy  three  men  who  faced  me  when  they 
returned.  They  were  full  of  bluff  at  what  they  would  do 
for  having  their  liberties  thus  interfered  with,  but  ob- 
viously uneasy  at  heart. 

With  some  labour  we  discovered  that  the  water  only 
entered  the  wreck  at  low  tide  and  forward;  so  by  buoy- 
ing her  with  casks,  tearing  up  her  ballast  deck,  and 
using  our  own  pumps  as  well  as  buckets  —  at  which  all 
hands  of  my  crew  worked  with  a  good  will,  we  at  last 
found  the  hole.  It  was  round.  There  were  no  splinters 
on  the  inside.  We  made  a  huge  bung  from  a  stick  of 
wood,  plugged  the  opening,  finished  pumping  her  out, 
and  before  dark  had  her  floating  alongside  us.  Late  that 
night  we  were  once  more  anchored  —  this  time  opposite 
the  dwelling-house  of  my  friend  the  owner.  We  immedi- 
ately went  ashore  and  woke  him  up.  There  is  a  great 
deal  in  doing  things  at  the  psychological  moment;  and 
by  midnight  I  had  a  deed  duly  drawn  up,  signed  and 
sealed,  selling  me  the  steamer  for  fifty  cents.  I  still  see 
the  look  in  his  eyes  as  he  gave  me  fifty  cents  change  from 
a  dollar.  He  was  a  self-made  man,  had  acquired  con- 
siderable money,  and  was  keen  as  a  ferret  at  business. 
The  deed  was  to  me  a  confession  that  he  was  in  the  plot 
for  barratry,  to  murder  the  boat  for  her  insurance. 

On  our  trip  South  we  picked  up  the  small  steamer, 
and  towing  her  to  a  Hudson  Bay  Company's  Post  we 
put  her  "on  the  hard,"  photographed  the  hole,  with  all 
the  splintering  on  the  outside,  and  had  a  proper  survey  of 
the  hull  made  by  the  Company's  shipwright.  The 
unanimous  verdict  was  "wilful  murder."  In  the  fall  as 
her  own  best  witness,  we  tried  to  tow  her  to  St.  John's, 


212  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

but  in  a  heavy  breeze  of  wind  and  thick  snow  we  lost 
her  at  sea  —  and  with  her  our  own  case  as  well.  The 
law  decided  that  there  was  no  evidence,  and  my  friend, 
making  out  that  he  had  lost  the  boat  and  the  insur- 
ance, threatened  to  sue  me  for  the  value. 

The  sequel  of  the  story  may  as  well  be  told  here.  A 
year  or  so  later  I  had  just  returned  from  Labrador.  It 
used  to  be  said  always  that  our  boat  "brought  up  the 
keel  of  the  Labrador";  but  this  year  our  friend  had 
remained  until  every  one  else  had  gone.  Just  as  we  were 
about  to  leave  for  England,  the  papers  in  St.  John's 
published  the  news  of  the  loss  of  a  large  foreign-going 
vessel,  laden  with  fish  for  the  Mediterranean,  near  the 
very  spot  where  our  friend  lived.  On  a  visit  a  little  later 
to  the  shipping  office  I  found  the  event  described  in  the 
graphic  words  of  the  skipper  and  mate.  Our  friend  the 
consignee  had  himself  been  on  board  at  the  time  the 
"accident"  occurred.  After  prodigies  of  valour  they  had 
been  forced  to  leave  the  ship,  condemn  her,  and  put  her 
up  for  sale.  Our  friend,  the  only  buyer  at  such  a  time  on 
the  coast,  had  bought  her  in  for  eighty  dollars. 

It  was  the  end  of  November,  and  already  a  great  deal 
of  ice  had  made.  The  place  was  six  hundred  miles  north. 
The  expense  of  trying  to  save  the  ship  would  be  great. 
But  was  she  really  lost.^^  The  heroics  sounded  too  good 
to  be  true.  All  life  is  a  venture.  Why  not  take  one  in  the 
cause  of  righteousness  .f*  That  night  in  a  chartered  steam 
trawler,  with  a  trusty  diver,  we  steamed  out  of  the  har- 
bour, steering  north.  Our  skipper  was  the  sea  rival  of 
the  famous  Captain  Blandford;  and  the  way  he  drove 
his  little  craft,  with  the  ice  inches  thick  from  the  driving 
spray  all  over  the  bridge  and  blocking  the  chart-room 
windows,  made  one  glad  to  know  that  the  good  sea 
genius  of  the  English  was  still  so  well  preserved. 


FIRST  WINTER  AT  ST.  ANTHONY       213 

When  our  distance  was  run  down  we  hauled  in  for 
the  land,  but  had  to  lay  "hove  to"  (with  the  ship 
sugared  like  a  Christmas  cake),  as  we  were  unable 
to  recognize  our  position  in  the  drifting  snow.  At  length 
we  located  the  islands,  and  never  shall  I  forget  as  we 
drew  near  hearing  the  watch  call  out,  "A  ship's  top- 
masts over  the  land."  It  was  the  wreck  we  were  looking 
for. 

It  took  some  hours  to  cut  through  the  ice  in  which 
she  lay,  before  ever  we  could  get  aboard;  and  even  the 
old  skipper  showed  excitement  when  at  last  we  stood 
on  her  deck.  Needless  to  say,  she  was  not  upside  down, 
nor  was  she  damaged  in  any  way,  though  she  was  com- 
pletely stripped  of  all  running  gear.  The  diver  reported 
no  damage  to  her  bottom,  while  the  mate  reported  the 
fish  in  her  hold  dry,  and  the  hatches  still  tightly  clewed, 
never  having  been  stirred. 

With  much  hearty  good-will  our  crew  jettisoned  fish 
enough  into  our  own  vessel  to  float  the  craft.  Fearing 
that  so  late  in  the  year  we  might  fail  to  tow  her  safely 
so  far,  and  remembering  the  outcome  of  our  losing  the 
launch,  we  opened  the  stores  on  the  island,  and  finding 
both  block  and  sails,  neatly  labelled  and  stowed  away, 
we  soon  had  our  prize  not  only  refitted  for  sea,  but  also 
stocked  with  food,  water,  chart,  and  compass  and  all 
essentials  for  a  voyage  across  the  Atlantic,  if  she  were 
to  break  loose  and  we  to  lose  her.  The  last  orders  were 
to  the  mate,  who  was  put  on  board  her  with  a  crew,  "If 
not  St.  John's  then  Liverpool." 

No    such    expedient,    however,    proved    necessary. 
Though  we  had  sixty  fathoms  of  anchor  chain  on  each 
of  our  wire  cables  to  the  ship,  we  broke  one  in  a  seaway 
and  had  to  haul  under  the  lee  of  some  cliffs  and  repair 
damages.  Often  for  hours  together  the  vessel  by  day 


214  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  her  lights  by  night  would  disappear,  and  our  hearts 
would  jump  into  our  mouths  for  fear  we  might  yet  fail. 
But  at  last,  with  all  our  bunting  up,  and  both  ships 
dressed  as  if  for  a  holiday,  we  proudly  entered  the  Nar- 
rows of  St.  John's,  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes.  The  skipper 
and  our  friend  had  gone  to  England,  so  the  Govern- 
ment had  them  extradited.  The  captain,  who  was  ill 
with  a  fatal  disease,  made  a  full  confession,  and  both 
men  were  sent  to  prison. 

That  was  how  we  "went  dry"  in  our  section  of  La- 
brador. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  COOPERATIVE  MOVEMENT 

Being  a  professional  and  not  a  business  man,  and 
having  no  acquaintance  with  the  ways  of  trade,  the 
importance  of  a  new  economic  system  as  one  of  the 
most  permanent  messages  of  helpfulness  to  the  coast 
was  not  at  first  obvious  to  me.  But  the  ubiquitous  bar- 
ter system,  which  always  left  the  poor  men  the  worst 
end  of  the  bargain,  is  as  subtle  a  danger  as  can  face  a 
community  —  subtle  because  it  impoverishes  and  en- 
slaves the  victims,  and  then  makes  them  love  their  chains. 

As  a  magistrate  I  once  heard  a  case  where  a  poor  man 
paid  one  hundred  dollars  in  cash  to  his  trader  in  the  fall 
to  get  him  a  new  net.  The  trader  could  not  procure  the 
twine,  and  when  spring  arrived  the  man  came  to  get  on 
credit  his  usual  advance  of  "tings."  From  the  bill  for 
these  the  trader  deducted  the  hundred  dollars  cash, 
upon  which  the  man  actually  came  to  me  as  a  justice 
of  the  peace  to  have  him  punished ! 

Lord  Strathcona  told  me  that  in  his  day  on  this  coast, 
when  a  man  had  made  so  good  a  hunt  that  he  had  pur- 
chased all  he  could  think  of,  he  would  go  round  to  the 
store  again  asking  how  much  money  was  still  due  him. 
He  would  then  take  up  purchases  to  exceed  it  by  a 
moderate  margin,  saying  that  he  liked  to  keep  his  name 
on  the  Company's  books.  In  those  days  the  people  felt 
that  they  had  the  best  part  of  the  bargain  if  they  were 
always  a  little  in  debt.  The  tendency  to  thrift  was  thus 
annihilated.  The  fishermen  simply  turned  in  all  their 
catch  to  the  merchant,  and  took  what  was  coming  to 
them  as  a  matter  of  course.  Many  even  were  afraid  to 


216  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

ask  for  certain  supplies.  This  fact  often  became  evident 
when  we  were  trying  to  order  special  diets  —  the  pa- 
tient would  reply,  "  Our  trader  won't  give  out  that." 
Naturally  the  whole  system  horrified  us,  as  being  the 
nearest  possible  approach  to  English  slavery,  for  the 
poor  man  was  in  constant  fear  that  the  merchant  "will 
turn  me  off."  On  the  other  hand,  the  traders  took  pre- 
cautions that  their  "dealers"  should  not  be  able  to 
leave  them,  such  as  not  selling  them  traps  outright  for 
furring,  or  nets  for  fishing,  but  only  loaning  them,  and 
having  them  periodically  returned.  This  method  in- 
sured their  securing  all  the  fur  caught,  because  legally  a 
share  of  the  catch  belonged  to  them  in  return  for  the 
loan  of  the  trap  They  thus  completely  minimized  the 
chance  for  competition,  which  is  "the  life  of  trade." 

Soon  after  my  arrival  on  the  coast  I  saw  the  old  Hud- 
son Bay  Company's  plan  of  paying  in  bone  counters  of 
various  colours;  and  a  large  lumber  company  paying 
its  wages  in  tin  money,  stamped  "Only  valuable  at  our 
store."  If,  to  counteract  this  handicap,  the  men  sold 
fish  or  fur  for  cash  to  outsiders,  and  their  suppliers  found 
it  out,  they  would  punish  them  severely. 

On  another  occasion,  sitting  by  me  on  a  gunning  point 
where  we  were  shooting  ducks  as  they  flew  by  on  their 
fall  migration,  was  a  friend  who  had  given  me  much 
help  in  building  one  of  our  hospitals.  I  suddenly  noticed 
that  he  did  not  fire  at  a  wonderful  flock  of  eiders  which 
went  right  over  our  heads.  "What's  the  matter,  Jim?  " 
I  asked.  "I  settled  with  the  merchant  to-day,"  he  re- 
plied, "and  he  won't  give  me  nothing  for  powder.  A 
duck  or  two  won't  matter.  'T  is  the  children  I'm  mind- 
ing." The  fishery  had  been  poor,  and  not  having  enough 
to  meet  his  advances,  he  had  sold  a  few  quintals  of  fish 
for  cash,  so  as  to  get  things  like  milk  which  he  would 


THE  COOPERATIVE  MOVEMENT        217 

not  be  allowed  on  winter  credit,  and  had  been  caught 
doing  so.  He  was  a  grown  man  and  the  father  of  four 
children.  We  went  to  his  trader  to  jQnd  out  how  much 
he  was  in  debt.  The  man's  account  on  the  books  was 
shown  us,  and  it  read  over  three  thousand  dollars  against 
our  friend.  It  had  been  carried  on  for  many  years.  A 
year  or  two  later  when  the  merchant  himself  went  bank- 
rupt with  a  debt  of  $686,000  to  the  bank  of  which  he 
was  a  director,  the  people  of  that  village,  some  four 
hundred  and  eleven  souls  in  all,  owed  his  firm  $64,000, 
an  asset  returned  as  value  nil.  The  whole  thing  seemed 
a  nightmare  to  any  one  who  cared  about  these  people. 
In  Labrador  no  cereals  are  grown  and  the  summer 
frosts  make  potato  and  turnip  crops  precarious,  so  that 
the  tops  of  the  latter  are  practically  all  the  green  food 
to  which  we  can  aspire  —  except  for  the  few  families 
who  remain  at  the  heads  of  the  long  bays  all  summer, 
far  removed  from  the  polar  current.  Furthermore,  un- 
til some  one  invents  a  way  to  extract  the  fishy  taste 
from  our  fish  oils,  we  must  import  our  edible  fats;  for 
the  Labrador  dogs  will  not  permit  cows  or  even  goats 
to  live  near  them.  I  have  heard  only  this  week  that  a 
process  has  just  been  discovered  in  California  for  making 
a  pleasant  tasting  butter  out  of  fish  oil.  Our  "sweetness" 
must  all  be  imported,  for  none  of  our  native  berries  are 
naturally  sweet,  and  we  can  grow  no  cultivated  fruits. 
The  same  fact  applies  to  cotton  and  wool.  Thus  nearly 
all  our  necessities  of  life  have  to  be  brought  to  us.  Fire- 
wood, lumber,  fish  and  game,  boots  or  clothing  of  skins, 
are  all  that  we  can  provide  for  ourselves.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  must  export  our  codfish,  salmon,  trout,  whales, 
oil,  fur,  and  in  fact  practically  all  our  products.  An  ex- 
change medium  is  therefore  imperative;  and  we  must 
have  some  gauge  like  cash  by  which  to  measure,  or  else 


gl8  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

we  shall  lose  on  all  transactions;  for  all  the  prices  of 
both  exports  and  imports  fluctuate  very  rapidly,  and 
besides  this,  we  had  then  practically  no  way  to  find 
out  what  prices  were  maintaining  in  our  markets. 

Government  relief  had  failed  to  stop  the  evils  of  the 
barter  system.  In  the  opinion  of  thinking  men  it  only 
made  matters  worse.  We  were  therefore  from  every  point 
of  view  encouraged  to  start  the  cooperative  plan  which 
had  proved  so  successful  in  England.  I  still  believe  that 
the  people  are  honest,  and  that  the  laziness  of  indolence, 
from  the  stigma  of  which  it  is  often  impossible  to  clear 
them,  is  due  to  despair  and  inability  to  work  properly 
owing  to  imperfect  nourishment. 

Things  went  from  bad  to  worse  as  the  years  went  by. 
The  fact  of  the  sealing  steamers  killing  the  young  seals 
before  they  could  swim  greatly  impoverished  the  Lab- 
rador inshore  seal  fishery.  The  prices  of  fish  were  so  low 
that  a  man  could  scarcely  catch  enough  to  pay  for  his 
summer  expenses  out  of  it. 

With  us  the  matter  came  to  a  head  in  a  little  fishing 
village  called  Red  Bay,  on  the  north  side  of  the  Straits 
of  Belle  Isle.  When  we  ran  in  there  on  our  last  visit 
one  fall,  we  found  some  of  our  good  friends  packed  up 
and  waiting  on  their  stages  to  see  if  we  would  remove 
them  from  the  coast.  A  meeting  was  called  that  night 
to  consider  the  problem,  and  it  was  decided  that  the 
people  must  try  to  be  their  own  merchants,  accepting 
the  risks  and  sharing  the  profits.  The  fisherman's  and 
trapper's  life  is  a  gamble,  and  naturally,  therefore, 
they  like  credit  advances,  for  it  makes  the  other  man 
carry  the  risks.  We  then  and  there  decided,  however, 
to  venture  a  cooperative  store,  hiring  a  schooner  to 
bring  our  freight  and  carry  our  produce  straight  to 
market;  and  if  necessary  eat  grass  for  a  year  or  so.  Alas, 


)                   

mg:y 

m 

r 

Wki-' 

Jn 

^  »■ 

^ 

*' 

^' 


THE  COOPERATIVE  MOVEMENT        219 

after  a  year's  saving  the  seventeen  families  could  raise 
only  eighty-five  dollars  among  them  for  capital,  and  we 
had  to  loan  them  sufficient  to  obtain  the  first  cargo.  A 
young  fisherman  was  chosen  as  secretary,  and  the  store 
worked  well  from  the  beginning.  That  was  in  1905.  He 
is  still  secretary,  and  to-day  in  1918  the  five-dollar 
shares  are  worth  one  hundred  and  four  dollars  each,  by 
the  simple  process  of  accumulation  of  profits.  The  loan 
has  been  repaid  years  ago.  Not  a  barrow  load  of  fish 
leaves  the  harbour  except  through  the  cooperative  store. 
Due  to  it,  the  people  have  been  able  to  tide  over  a  series 
of  bad  fisheries;  and  every  family  is  free  of  debt. 

At  the  time  of  the  formation  one  most  significant 
fact  was  that  every  shareholder  insisted  that  his  name 
must  not  be  registered,  for  fear  some  one  might  find 
out  that  he  owned  cash.  They  were  even  opposed  to  a 
label  on  the  building  to  signify  that  it  was  a  store.  How- 
ever, I  chalked  all  over  its  face  "Red  Bay  Cooperative 
Store." 

The  whole  effort  met  with  very  severe  criticism,  not 
to  say  hostility,  at  the  hands  of  the  smaller  traders, 
but  the  larger  merchants  were  most  generous  in  their 
attitude,  and  though  doubtful  of  the  possibility  of 
realizing  a  cash  basis,  were  without  exception  favourable 
to  the  attempt.  This  store  has  been  an  unqualified  suc- 
cess, only  limited  in  its  blessings  by  its  lack  of  larger 
capital.  It  has  enabled  its  members  to  live  independently, 
free  of  debt  and  without  want;  while  similar  villages, 
both  south  and  east  and  west,  have  been  gradually  de- 
leted by  the  people  being  forced  to  leave  through  ina- 
bility to  meet  their  needs. 

During  my  first  winter  at  St.  Anthony,  the  young 
minister  of  the  little  church  on  more  than  one  occasion 
happened  to  be  visiting  on  his  rounds  in  the  very  house 


220  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

where  we  were  staying  on  ours,  and  the  subject  of  co- 
operation was  frequently  discussed  over  the  evening 
pipe  with  the  friends  in  the  place.  He  had  himself  been 
trading,  and  had  so  dishked  the  methods  that  he  had 
retired.  He  would  certainly  help  us  to  organize  a  store 
on  the  Newfoundland  side  of  the  Straits. 

At  last  the  day  arrived  for  the  initial  meeting.  We 
gave  notice  everywhere.  The  chosen  rendezvous  was 
in  a  village  fourteen  miles  north.  The  evening  before, 
however,  the  minister  sent  word  that  he  could  not  be 
present,  as  he  had  to  go  to  a  place  twenty  miles  to  the 
northwest  to  hold  service.  Knowing  for  how  much  his 
opinion  coimted  in  the  minds  of  some  of  the  people,  this 
was  a  heavy  blow,  especially  as  the  traders  had  notified 
me  that  they  would  all  be  on  hand.  Fortunately  an  in- 
genious suggestion  was  made  —  "He  doesn't  know  the 
way.  Persuade  his  driver,  after  starting  out,  to  gradually 
work  round  and  end  up  at  the  cooperative  meeting.'* 
This  was  actually  done,  and  our  friend  was  present 
willy-nilly.  He  proved  a  broken  reed,  however,  for  in 
the  face  of  the  traders  he  went  back  on  cooperation. 

As  fortune  would  have  it,  our  own  komatik  fell  through 
the  ice  in  taking  a  short  cut  across  a  bay,  and  we  arrived 
late,  having  had  to  borrow  some  dry  clothing  from  a 
fisherman  on  the  way.  Our  trader  friends  had  already 
appeared  on  the  scene,  and  were  joking  the  parson  for 
being  tricked,  saying  that  evidently  we  had  made  a 
mistake  and  were  really  at  Cape  Norman,  the  place  to 
which  he  had  intended  to  go. 

It  was  a  dark  evening,  crisp  and  cold,  and  hundreds  of 
dogs  that  had  hauled  people  from  all  over  the  country- 
side to  the  meeting  made  night  dismal  outside.  We  be- 
gan our  meeting  with  prayer  for  guidance,  wisdom,  and 
good  temper,  for  we  knew  that  we  should  need  them  all 


THE  COOPERATIVE  MOVEMENT        221 

' — and  then  we  came  down  to  statistics,  prices,  debts, 
possibilities,  and  the  story  of  cooperation  elsewhere. 

The  little  house  was  crammed  to  overflowing.  But 
the  fear  of  the  old  regime  was  heavy  on  the  meeting. 
The  traders  occupied  the  whole  time  for  speaking.  Only 
one  old  fisherman  spoke  at  all.  He  had  been  an  over- 
seas sailor  in  his  early  days,  and  he  surprised  himself 
by  turning  orator.  His  effort  elicited  great  applause. 
"Doctor  —  I  means  Mr.  Chairman  —  if  this  here  copper 
store  buys  a  bar'l  of  flour  in  St.  John's  for  five  dollars,  be 
it  going  to  sell  it  to  we  fer  ten?  That's  what  us  wants  to 
know." 

Outside,  after  the  meeting.  Babel  was  let  loose.  The 
general  opinion  was  that  there  must  be  something  to  it 
or  the  traders  would  not  have  so  much  to  say  against 
the  project.  The  upshot  of  the  matter  was  that  for  a  long 
time  no  one  could  be  found  who  would  take  the  manager- 
ship; but  at  length  the  best-beloved  fisherman  on  the 
shore  stepped  into  the  breach.  He  was  not  a  scholar  — 
in  fact  could  scarcely  read,  write,  and  figure  —  but  his 
pluck,  optimism,  and  unselfishness  carried  him  through. 

That  little  store  has  been  preaching  its  vital  truths 
ever  since.  It  is  a  still  small  text,  but  it  has  had  vast  in- 
fluences for  good.  There  has  proved  to  be  one  difficulty. 
It  is  the  custom  on  the  coast  to  give  all  meals  to  travel- 
lers free,  both  men  and  dogs,  and  lodging  to  boot.  Cus- 
tomers came  from  so  far  away  that  they  had  to  stay  over- 
night at  least,  and  of  course  it  was  always  Harry's  house 
to  which  they  went.  The  profit  on  a  twenty-five  cent 
purchase  was  slender  under  these  circumstances,  and 
as  cash  was  scarce  in  those  days,  a  twenty-five-cent 
purchase  was  not  so  rare  as  might  be  supposed.  We  there- 
fore printed,  mounted,  framed,  and  sent  to  our  friend 
the  legend,  "No  more  free  meals.  Each  meal  will  cost 


222  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

ten  cents."  Later  we  received  a  most  grateful  reply  from 
him  in  his  merry  way,  saying  that  he  had  hung  up  the 
card  in  his  parlour,  but  begging  us  not  to  defer  visits 
if  we  had  not  the  requisite  amount,  as  he  was  permitted 
to  give  credit  to  that  extent.  But  when  next  we  suddenly 
"blew  in"  to  Harry's  house,  the  legend  was  hanging 
with  its  face  to  the  wall. 

Our  third  store  was  seventy-five  miles  to  the  west- 
ward at  a  place  called  Flowers  Cove.  Here  the  parson 
came  in  with  a  will.  Being  a  Church  of  England  man, 
he  was  a  more  permanent  resident,  and,  as  he  said,"  he 
was  a  poor  man,  but  he  would  sell  his  extra  pair  of  boots 
to  be  able  to  put  one  more  share  in  the  store."  What 
was  infinitely  more  important  he  put  in  his  brains. 
Every  one  in  that  vicinity  who  had  felt  the  slavery  of  the 
old  system  joined  the  venture.  One  poor  Irishman  walked 
several  miles  around  the  coast  to  catch  me  on  my  next 
visit,  and  secretly  give  me  five  dollars.  "  'T  is  all  I  has 
in  the  world.  Doctor,  saving  a  bunch  of  children,  but 
if  it  was  ten  times  as  large,  you  should  have  every  cent 
of  it  for  the  store."  "Thanks,  Paddy,  that's  the  talking 
that  tells."  For  some  years  afterwards,  every  time  that 
he  knew  I  was  making  a  visit  to  that  part  of  the  coast, 
he  would  come  around  seeking  a  private  interview,  and 
inquire  after  the  health  of  "the  copper  store";  till  he 
triumphantly  brought  another  five  dollars  for  a  second 
share  "out  of  my  profits,  Doctor." 

That  store  is  now  a  limited  liability  company  with  a 
capital  of  ten  thousand  dollars  owned  entirely  by  the 
fishermen,  it  has  paid  consistently  a  ten  per  cent  divi- 
dend every  year,  and  is  located  in  fine  premises  which 
it  bought  and  owns  outright. 

A  fourth  store  followed  near  the  lumber  mill  which 
we  started  to  give  winter  labour  at  logging;  but  owing 


THE  COOPERATIVE  MOVEMENT         223 

to  bad  management  and  lack  of  ability  to  say  "no"  to 
men  seeking  credit,  it  fell  into  debt  and  we  closed  it 
up.  Number  five  almost  shared  the  same  fate.  Unable 
to  get  local  talent  to  manage  it,  we  hired  a  Canadian 
whose  pretensions  proved  unequal  to  his  responsibility. 
He  was,  however,  found  out  in  time  to  reorganize  the 
store;  but  the  loss  which  he  had  caused  was  heavy,  and 
it  was  his  notice  of  leaving  for  Canada  which  alone 
betrayed  the  truth  to  us.  The  most  serious  aspect  of  the 
matter  was  that  many  of  the  local  fishermen  lost  confi- 
dence in  the  ability  of  the  store  to  succeed,  and  return- 
ing to  the  credit  system,  they  found  it  modified  enough 
to  appear  to  them  a  lamb  instead  of  a  wolf.  However, 
number  five  is  growing  all  the  time  again  and  will  yet  be 
a  factor  in  the  people's  deliverance. 

Numbers  six  and  seven  were  in  poor  and  remote  parts 
of  Labrador,  very  small,  and  with  insufficient  capital 
and  brains.  One  has  closed  permanently.  They  were  sim- 
ply small  stores  under  the  care  of  one  settler,  who  guar- 
anteed to  charge  the  people  only  a  fixed  percentage 
over  St.  John's  prices  for  goods,  as  the  return  for  his 
responsibility.  Number  eight  was  the  result  of  a  night 
spent  in  a  miserable  shack  on  a  lonely  promontory  called 
Adlavik. 

God  forbid  that  I  should  judge  traders  or  doctors  or 
lawyers  or  priests  by  their  profession  or  their  intellectual 
attitude.  There  are  noble  men  in  all  walks  of  life.  Alas, 
some  are  more  liable  than  others  to  yield  to  temptation, 
and  the  temptations  to  which  they  are  exposed  are  more 
insistent. 

Number  nine  was  on  the  extreme  northern  edge  of  the 
white  settlers  at  Ford's  Harbour.  The  story  of  it  is  too 
long  to  relate,  but  the  trade  there,  in  spite  of  many  diffi- 
culties, still  continues  to  preach  a  gospel  and  spell  much 


224  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

blessing  to  poor  people.  To  help  out,  we  have  sent  north 
to  this  station  three  of  our  boys  from  the  orphanage,  as 
they  grew  old  enough  to  go  out  into  the  world  for  them- 
selves. 

One  disaster,  in  the  form  of  a  shipwreck,  overtook  the 
fine  fellow  in  charge  of  this  most  northerly  venture.  For 
the  first  time  in  his  life  he  came  south,  to  seek  a  wife, 
his  former  wife  having  succumbed  to  tuberculosis.  He 
brought  with  him  his  year's  products  of  fur  and  skin 
boots.  The  mail  steamer  on  which  he  was  travelling 
struck  a  rock  off  Battle  Harbour,  and  most  of  his  goods 
were  lost  uninsured,  he  himself  gladly  enough  escaping 
with  his  life. 

It  remained  for  our  tenth  venture  to  bring  the  hardest 
battle,  and  in  a  sense  the  greatest  measure  of  success. 
Spurred  by  the  benefits  of  the  Red  Bay  store,  the  people 
of  a  little  village  about  forty  miles  away  determined  to 
combine  also.  The  result  was  a  fine  store  near  our  hospital 
at  Battle  Harbour  —  which  during  the  first  year  did 
sixty  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  business.  This  served  to 
put  a  match  to  the  explosive  wrath  of  those  whose  oppo- 
sition hitherto  had  been  that  of  rats  behind  a  wainscot. 
They  secured  from  their  friends  a  Government  commis- 
sion appointed  to  inquire  into  the  work  of  the  Mission 
as  "a  menace  to  honest  trade."  The  leading  petitioner 
had  been  the  best  of  helpers  to  the  first  venture.  When 
the  traders  affected  by  it  had  first  boycotted  the  fish,  he 
had  sent  his  steamer  and  purchased  it  from  the  company. 
Now  the  boot  was  on  the  other  leg.  The  Commission  and 
even  the  lawyers  have  all  told  me  that  they  were  pre- 
judiced against  the  whole  Mission  by  hearsay  and  mis- 
interpretations, before  they  even  began  their  exhaustive 
inquiry.  Their  findings,  however,  were  a  complete  refu- 
tation of  all  charges,  and  the  best  advertisement  possible. 


THE  COOPERATIVE  MOVEMENT        225 

It  would  not  be  the  time  to  say  that  the  whole  co- 
operative venture  has  been  an  unquahfied  success;  but 
the  causes  of  failure  in  each  case  have  been  perfectly 
obvious,  and  no  fault  of  the  system.  Lack  of  business 
ability  has  been  the  main  trouble,  and  the  lack  of  cour- 
age and  unity  which  everywhere  characterizes  mankind, 
but  is  perhaps  more  emphasized  on  a  coast  where  fail- 
ure means  starvation,  and  where  the  cooperative  spirit 
has  been  rendered  very  difficult  to  arouse  owing  to  mis- 
trust born  of  religious  sectarianism  and  denominational 
schools.  These  all  militate  very  strongly  against  that 
unity  which  alone  can  enable  labour  to  come  to  its  own 
without  productive  ability. 

There  is  one  aspect  for  which  we  are  particularly 
grateful.  Politics,  at  any  rate,  has  not  been  permitted  to 
intrude,  and  the  stress  laid  on  the  need  of  brotherliness, 
forbearance,  and  self-development  —  if  ever  these  pro- 
ducers are  to  reap  the  rewards  of  being  their  own  traders 
—  has  been  very  marked.  Only  thus  can  they  share  in 
the  balance  of  profit  which  makes  the  difference  between 
plenty  and  poverty  on  this  isolated  coast. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM 

The  argument  for  cooperation  had  been  that  life  on  the 
coast  was  not  worth  living  under  the  credit  system.  A 
short  feast  and  a  long  famine  was  the  local  epigram.  If 
our  profits  could  be  maintained  on  the  coast,  and  spent 
on  the  coast,  then  the  next-to-nature  Kfe  had  enough  to 
offer  in  character  as  well  as  in  maintenance  to  attract  a 
permanent  population,  especially  with  the  furring  in 
winter.  For  the  actual  figures  showed  that  good  hunters 
made  from  a  thousand  to  fifteen  hundred  dollars  in  a 
season,  besides  the  salmon  and  cod  fishery.  There  was, 
moreover,  game  for  food,  free  firewood,  water,  homes, 
and  no  taxation  except  indirect  in  duties  on  their  goods. 

These  same  conditions  prevailed  on  the  long,  narrow 
slice  of  land  known  as  the  "French  shore"  in  northern 
Newfoundland.  There  the  people  were  more  densely 
settled,  the  hinterland  was  small,  and  many  therefore 
could  not  go  furring.  Moreover,  the  polar  current,  enter- 
ing the  mouth  of  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  makes  this 
section  of  land  more  liable  to  summer  frosts,  with  a  far 
worse  climate  than  the  Labrador  bays,  and  gardening  is 
less  remunerative.  We  puzzled  our  brains  for  some  way 
to  add  to  our  earning  capacities,  some  co5perative  pro- 
ductive as  well  as  distributive  enterprise. 

The  poverty  which  I  had  witnessed  in  Canada  Bay 
in  North  Newfoundland,  some  sixty  miles  south  of  St. 
Anthony  Hospital,  had  left  me  very  keen  to  do  some- 
thing for  that  district  which  might  really  offer  a  solution 
of  the  problem.  I  had  been  told  that  there  was  plenty  of 
timber  to  justify  running  a  mill  in  the  bay;  but  that  no 


'  THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        227 

sawmills  paid  in  Newfoundland.  This  was  emphasized 
in  St.  John's  by  my  friends  who  still  own  the  only  venture 
out  of  the  eleven  which  have  operated  in  that  city  that 
has  been  able  to  continue.  They  have  succeeded  by 
adopting  modern  methods  and  erecting  a  factory  for 
making  furniture,  so  as  to  supply  finished  articles  direct 
to  their  customers.  We  knew  that  in  our  case  labour 
would  be  cheaper  than  ordinarily,  for  our  labour  in 
winter  had  generally  to  go  begging.  It  was  mainly  this 
fact  which  finally  induced  us  to  make  the  attempt. 

Having  talked  the  matter  over  with  the  people  we 
secured  from  the  Government  a  special  grant,  as  the 
venture,  if  it  succeeded,  would  reHeve  them  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  having  poor-relief  bills.  The  whole  expense  of 
the  enterprise  fell  upon  myself,  for  the  Mission  Board 
considered  it  outside  their  sphere;  and  already  we  had 
built  St.  Anthony  Hospital  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they 
thought  that  we  were  undertaking  more  than  they  would 
be  able  to  handle,  and  had  discouraged  it  from  the  first. 

The  people  had  no  money  to  start  a  mill,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances prohibited  my  asking  aid  from  outside,  so  it 
was  with  considerable  anxiety  that  we  ordered  a  mill,  as 
if  it  were  a  pound  of  chocolates,  and  arranged  with  two 
young  friends  to  come  out  from  England  as  volunteers, 
except  for  their  expenses,  to  help  us  through  with  the 
new  effort.  At  the  same  time  there  was  three  hundred 
dollars  to  pay  for  the  necessary  survey  and  line  cutting, 
and  supplies  of  food  for  the  loggers  for  the  winter.  Houses 
must  also  be  erected  and  furnished. 

Ignorance  imdoubtedly  supplied  us  with  the  courage 
to  begin.  Personally  I  knew  nothing  whatever  of  mills, 
having  never  even  seen  one.  Nor  had  I  seen  the  grant  of 
land,  or  selected  a  site  for  the  building.  This  was  left 
entirely  to  the  people  themselves;  and  as  none  of  them 


228  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

had  ever  seen  a  mill  either,  we  all  felt  a  bit  uneasy  about 
our  capacities.  I  had  left  orders  with  the  captain  of  the 
Cooperator  (our  schooner)  to  fetch  the  mill  and  put  it 
where  the  people  told  him;  but  when  I  heard  that  there 
was  one  piece  which  included  the  boiler  which  weighed 
three  tons,  it  seemed  to  me  that  they  could  never  handle 
it.  We  had  no  wharf  ready  to  receive  it  and  no  boat 
capable  of  carrying  it.  I  woke  many  times  that  summer 
wondering  if  it  had  not  gone  to  the  bottom  while  they 
were  attempting  the  landing.  There  was  no  communica- 
tion whatever  with  them  as  we  were  six  hundred  miles 
farther  north  on  our  summer  cruise;  and  we  had  not 
the  slightest  control  over  the  circumstances  in  which  we 
might  become  involved. 

It  was  late  in  the  season  and  the  snow  was  already 
deep  on  the  ground  when  eventually  we  were  piloted  to 
the  spot  selected.  It  was  nine  miles  up  the  bay  on  a  well- 
wooded  promontory  of  a  side  inlet.  The  water  was  deep 
to  the  shore  and  the  harbour  as  safe  as  a  house.  The  boys 
from  England  had  arrived,  and  a  small  cottage  had  been 
erected,  tucked  away  in  the  trees.  It  was  very  small,  and 
very  damp,  the  inside  of  the  walls  being  white  with 
frost  in  the  morning  until  the  fire  had  been  under  way 
for  some  time.  But  it  was  a  merry  crowd,  emerging  from 
various  little  hutlets  around  among  the  trees,  which 
greeted  the  Strathcona. 

The  big  boiler,  the  "bugaboo"  of  my  dreams  all  sum- 
mer, lay  on  the  bank.  "How  did  you  get  it  there?"  was 
my  first  query.  "We  warped  the  vessel  close  to  the  land, 
and  then  hove  her  close  ashore  and  put  skids  from  the 
rocks  off  to  her.  On  these  we  slid  the  boiler,  all  hands 
hauling  it  up  with  our  tackles." 

Having  left  the  few  supplies  which  we  had  with  us,  for 
the  Strathcona  has  no  hold  or  carrying  space,  we  re- 


THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        229 

turned  to  the  hospital,  mighty  grateful  for  the  successful 
opening  of  the  venture.  The  survey  had  been  completed 
and  accepted  by  the  Government,  and  though  unfor- 
tunately it  was  but  very  poorly  marked,  and  we  have 
had  lots  of  trouble  since,  —  as  we  have  never  been  able 
to  say  exactly  where  our  boundaries  lie,  nor  even  to  find 
marks  enough  to  follow  over  the  original  survey  again,  — 
yet  it  enabled  us  to  get  to  work,  which  was  all  that  we 
wanted  at  the  moment. 

The  fresh  problems  at  the  hospital,  and  the  constant 
demands  on  our  energies,  made  Christmas  and  New  Year 
go  by  with  our  minds  quite  alienated  from  the  cares  of 
the  new  enterprise.  But  when  after  Christmas  the  dogs 
had  safely  carried  us  over  many  miles  of  snow-covered 
wastes,  and  our  immediate  patients  gave  us  a  chance  to 
look  farther  afield,  I  began  to  wonder  if  we  might  not 
pay  the  mill  a  visit.  By  land  it  was  only  fifty  miles  dis- 
tant to  the  southward,  possibly  sixty  if  we  had  to  go 
round  the  bays.  The  only  difficulty  about  the  trip  was 
that  there  were  no  trails,  and  most  of  the  way  led  through 
virgin  forest,  where  windfalls  and  stumps  and  dense 
undergrowth  mixed  with  snow  made  the  ordinary  ob- 
stacle race  a  sprint  in  the  open  in  comparison.  We  knew 
what  it  meant,  because  in  our  eagerness  to  begin  our 
dog-driving  when  the  first  snow  came,  we  had  wandered 
over  small  trees  crusted  with  snow,  fallen  through,  and 
literally  floundered  about  under  the  crust,  unable  to 
climb  to  the  top  again.  It  was  the  nearest  thing  to  the 
sensations  of  a  man  who  cannot  swim  struggling  under 
the  surface  of  the  water.  Moreover,  on  a  tramp  with  the 
minister,  he  had  gone  through  his  snow  racquets  and 
actually  lost  the  bows  later,  smashing  them  all  up  as  he 
repeatedly  fell  through  between  logs  and  tree-trunks  and 
**  tuckamore."  His  summons  for  help  and  the  idea  that 


230  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

there  were  still  eight  miles  to  go  still  haunted  me.  On 
that  occasion  we  had  cut  down  some  spruce  boughs  and 
improvised  some  huge  webbed  feet  for  ourselves,  which 
had  saved  the  situation;  but  whether  they  would  have 
served  for  twenty  or  thirty  miles,  we  could  not  tell.  Not 
so  long  before  a  man  named  Casey,  bringing  his  komatik 
down  the  steep  hill  at  Conche,  missed  his  footing  and  fell 
headlong  by  a  bush  into  the  snow.  The  heavy,  loaded 
sledge  ran  over  him  and  pressed  him  still  farther  into  the 
bank.  Struggling  only  made  him  sink  the  deeper,  and  an 
hour  later  the  poor  fellow  was  discovered  smothered  to 
death. 

No  one  knew  the  way.  We  could  not  hear  of  a  single 
man  who  had  ever  gone  across  in  winter,  though  some 
said  that  an  old  fellow  who  had  Hved  farther  south  had 
once  carried  the  mails  that  way.  At  length  v/e  could 
stand  it  no  longer,  and  arranging  with  four  men  and  two 
extra  teams,  we  started  off.  We  hoped  to  reach  the  mill 
in  two  days,  but  at  the  end  of  that  time  we  were  still 
trying  to  push  through  the  tangle  of  these  close-grown 
forests.  To  steer  by  compass  sounded  easy,  but  the 
wretched  instrument  seemed  persistently  to  point  to 
precipitous  cliffs  or  impenetrable  thickets.  There  were 
no  barren  hilltops  after  the  first  twenty  miles.  Occasion- 
ally we  would  stop,  climb  a  tree,  and  try  to  get  a  view. 
But  climbing  a  conifer  whose  boughs  are  heavily  laden 
with  ice  and  snow  is  no  joke,  and  gave  very  meagre  re- 
turns. At  last,  however,  we  struck  a  high  divide,  and 
from  an  island  in  the  centre  of  a  lake,  occupied  only  by 
two  lone  fir  trees,  we  got  a  view  both  ways,  showing  the 
Cloudy  Hills  which  towered  over  the  south  side  of  the 
bay  in  which  the  mill  stood. 

A  very  high,  densely  wooded  hill  lay,  however,  directly 
in  our  path;  and  wliich  way  to  get  round  it  best  none  of 


THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        231 

us  knew.  We  "tossed  up"  and  went  to  the  eastward  — 
the  wrong  side,  of  course.  We  soon  struck  a  river,  and  at 
once  surmised  that  if  we  followed  it,  it  must  bring  us  to 
the  head  of  the  bay,  which  meant  only  three  miles  of 
salt  water  ice  to  cover.  Alas,  the  stream  proved  very 
torrential.  It  leaped  here  and  there  over  so  many  rapid 
falls  that  great  canyons  were  left  in  the  ice,  and  instead 
of  being  able  to  dash  along  as  when  first  we  struck  it,  we 
had  painfully  to  pick  our  way  between  heavy  ice-blocks, 
which  sorely  tangled  up  our  traces,  and  our  dogs  ran 
great  danger  of  being  injured.  Nor  could  we  leave  the 
river,  for  the  banks  were  precipitous  and  utterly  im- 
passable with  undergrowth.  At  length  when  we  came  to 
a  gorge  where  the  boiling  torrent  was  not  even  frozen, 
and  as  prospects  of  being  washed  under  the  ice  became 
only  too  vivid,  we  were  forced  to  cut  our  way  out  on  the 
sloping  sides.  The  task  was  great  fun,  but  an  exceed- 
ingly slow  process. 

It  was  altogether  an  exciting  and  delightful  trip.  Now 
we  have  a  good  trail  cut  and  blazed,  which  after  some 
years  of  experience  we  have  gradually  straightened  out, 
with  two  tilts  by  the  roadside  when  the  weather  makes 
camping  imperative,  or  when  delay  is  caused  by  having 
helpless  patients  to  haul,  till  now  it  is  only  a  "joy-ride" 
to  go  through  that  beautiful  country  "on  dogs."  There 
is  always  a  challenge,  however,  left  in  that  trail  —  just 
enough  to  lend  tang  to  the  toil  of  it.  Once,  having  missed 
the  way  in  a  blizzard,  we  had  to  camp  on  the  snow  with 
the  thermometer  standing  at  twenty  below  zero.  The 
problem  was  all  the  more  interesting  as  we  struck  only 
"taunt"  timberwoods  with  no  undergrowth  to  halt  the 
wind.  On  another  occasion  we  attempted  to  cross  Hare 
Bay,  and  one  of  the  dogs  fell  through  the  ice.  There  was 
a  biting  wind  blowing,  and  it  was  ten  degrees  below  zero. 


A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

When  we  were  a  mile  off  the  land  I  got  off  the  sledge  to 
try  the  ice  edge,  when  suddenly  it  gave  way,  and  in  I  fell. 
It  did  not  take  me  long  to  get  out  —  the  best  advice 
being  to  "keep  cool."  I  had  as  hard  a  mile's  running  as 
ever  I  experienced,  for  my  clothing  was  fast  becoming 
like  the  armour  of  an  ancient  knight;  and  though  in 
my  youth  I  had  been  accustomed  to  break  the  ice 
in  the  morning  to  bathe,  I  had  never  run  in  a  coat  of 
mail. 

Never  shall  I  forget  dragging  ourselves  in  among  those 
big  trees  with  our  axes,  and  tumbling  to  sleep  in  a  grave 
in  the  snow,  in  spite  of  the  elements.  In  this  hole  in  a 
sleeping-bag,  protected  by  the  light  drift  which  blew  in, 
one  rested  as  comfortably  as  in  a  more  conventional  type 
of  feather  bed.  Nor,  when  I  think  of  De  Quincey's  idea 
of  supreme  happiness  before  the  glowing  logs,  can  I  for- 
get that  gorgeous  blaze  which  the  watch  kept  up  by 
felling  trees  full  length  into  the  fire,  so  that  our  Yule 
logs  were  twenty  feet  long,  and  the  ruddy  glow  and 
crackling  warmth  went  smashing  through  the  hurtling 
snowdrift.  True,  it  was  cold  taking  off  our  dripping 
clothing,  which  as  it  froze  on  us  made  progress  as  diffi- 
cult as  if  we  were  encased  in  armour  But  dancing  up 
and  down  before  a  huge  fire  in  the  crisp  open  air  under 
God's  blue  sky  gave  as  pleasing  a  reaction  as  doing  the 
same  thing  in  the  dusty,  germ-laden  atmosphere  of  a 
ballroom  in  the  small  hours  of  the  night,  when  one  would 
better  be  in  bed,  if  the  joys  of  efficiency  and  accomplish- 
ment are  the  durable  pleasure  of  life. 

It  was  a  real  picnic  which  we  had  at  the  mill.  Our  visit 
was  as  welcome  as  it  was  unexpected,  and  we  celebrated 
it  by  the  whole  day  off,  when  all  hands  went  "rabbiting." 
When  at  the  end,  hot  and  tired,  we  gathered  round  a 
huge  log  fire  in  the  woods  and  discussed  boiling  cocoa 


THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        233 

and  pork  buns,  we  all  agreed  that  it  had  been  a  day 
worth  Hving  for. 

Logging  had  progressed  favourably.  Logs  were  close 
at  hand;  and  the  whole  enterprise  spelled  cash  coming 
in  that  the  people  had  never  earned  before.  The  time 
had  also  arrived  to  prepare  the  machinery  for  cutting  the 
timber  boxes  were  being  unpacked,  and  weird  iron 
"parts"  revealed  to  us,  that  had  all  the  interest  of  a 
Chinese  puzzle,  with  the  added  pleasure  of  knowing  that 
they  stood  for  much  if  we  solved  the  problems  rightly. 

When  next  we  saw  the  mill  it  was  spring,  and  the 
puffing  smoke  and  white  heaps  of  lumber  that  graced 
the  point  and  met  our  vision  as  we  rounded  Breakheart 
Point  will  not  soon  be  forgotten.  Only  one  trouble  had 
proved  insurmountable.  The  log-hauler  would  not  de- 
liver the  goods  to  the  rotary  saw.  Later,  with  the  knowl- 
edge that  the  whole  apparatus  was  upside  down,  it  did 
not  seem  so  surprising  after  all.  One  accident  also  marred 
the  year's  record.  While  a  party  of  children  had  been 
crossing  the  ice  in  the  harbour  to  school,  a  treacherous 
rapid  had  caused  it  to  give  way  and  leave  a  number  of 
them  in  the  water.  One  of  my  English  volunteers,  being 
a  first-class  athlete,  had  by  swimming  saved  five  lives, 
but  two  had  been  lost,  and  the  young  fellow  himself  so 
badly  chilled  that  it  had  taken  the  hot  body  of  one  of 
the  fathers  of  the  rescued  children,  wrapped  up  in  bed 
with  him  in  Heu  of  a  hot-water  bottle,  to  restore  his 
circulation. 

The  second  fall  was  our  hardest  period.  The  bills  for 
our  lumber  sold  had  not  been  paid  in  time  for  us  to  pur- 
chase the  absolutely  essential  stock  of  food  for  the  winter; 
and  if  we  could  not  get  a  store  of  food,  we  knew  that  our 
men  could  not  go  logging.  It  was  food,  not  cash,  which 
they  needed  in  the  months  when  their  own  slender  stock 


234  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

of  provisions  gave  out,  and  when  all  communication  was 
cut  off  by  the  frozen  sea. 

For  a  venture  which  seemed  to  us  problematical  in  its 
outcome,  we  did  not  dare  to  borrow  money  or  to  induce 
friends  to  invest;  and  of  course  Mission  funds  were  not 
available.  For  the  day  has  not  yet  arrived  when  all  those 
who  seek  by  their  gifts  to  hasten  the  coming  of  the  King- 
dom of  God  on  earth  recognize  that  to  give  the  oppor- 
tunity to  men  to  provide  decently  for  their  families  and 
homes  is  as  effective  work  for  the  Master,  whose  first 
attribute  was  love,  as  patching  up  the  unfortunate  vic- 
tims of  semi-starvation.  The  inculcation  of  the  par- 
ticular intellectual  conception  which  the  donor  may  hold 
of  religion,  or  as  to  how,  after  death,  the  soul  can  get  into 
heaven,  is,  as  the  result  of  the  Church  teaching,  still  con- 
sidered far  the  most  important  line  of  effort.  The  em- 
phasis on  hospitals  is  second,  partly  at  least  because,  so 
it  has  seemed  to  me  as  a  doctor  of  medicine,  the  more 
obvious  personal  benefit  thereby  conferred  renders  the 
recipients  more  impressionable  to  the  views  considered 
desirable  to  promulgate.  Yet  only  to-day,  as  I  came  home 
from  our  busy  operating-room,  I  felt  how  little  real  gain 
the  additional  time  on  earth  often  is  either  to  the  world 
outside  or  even  to  the  poor  sufferers  themselves.  In  order 
to  have  one's  early  teachings  on  these  matters  profoundly 
shaken,  one  has  only  to  work  as  a  surgeon  in  a  country 
where  tuberculosis,  beri-beri,  and  other  preventable  dis- 
eases, and  especially  the  chronic  malnutrition  of  poverty 
fills  your  clinic  with  suffering  children,  who  at  least 
are  victims  and  not  responsible  spiritually  for  their 
"punishment."  Of  course,  the  magnitude  of  service  to 
the  world  of  every  act  of  unselfishness,  and  much  more 
of  whole  lives  of  devotion,  such  as  that  of  Miss  Sullivan, 
the  teacher  of  Miss  Helen  Keller,  can  never  be  rightly 


THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        235 

estimated  by  any  purely  material  conception  of  hmnan 
life. 

Love  is  dangerously  near  to  sentimentality  when  we 
actually  prefer  remedial  to  prophylactic  charity  —  and 
I  personally  feel  that  it  is  false  economy  even  from  the 
point  of  view  of  mission  funds.  The  industrial  mission, 
the  educational  mission,  and  the  orphanage  work  at  least 
rank  with  and  should  go  hand  in  hand  with  hospitals  in 
any  true  interpretation  of  a  gospel  of  love. 

In  subsequent  years  the  nearest  attempt  to  finance 
such  commonly  called  "side  issues  of  the  work"  has 
been  with  us  through  the  medium  of  a  discretionary  fund. 
Into  this  are  put  sums  of  money  specially  given  by  per- 
sonal friends,  who  are  content  to  leave  the  allocation  of 
their  expenditure  in  the  hands  of  the  worker  on  the  actual 
field.  This  fund  is,  of  course,  paid  out  in  the  same  way  as 
other  mission  funds,  and  is  as  strictly  supervised  by  the 
auditors.  While  it  leaves  possibly  more  responsibility 
than  some  of  us  are  worthy  of,  it  enables  individuality 
to  play  that  part  in  mission  business  which  every  one 
recognizes  to  be  all-important  in  the  ordinary  business  of 
the  world.  No  money,  however,  from  this  fund  has  ever 
gone  into  the  mill  or  in  assisting  the  cooperative  stores. 

Sorry  as  one  feels  to  confess  it,  I  have  seen  money 
wasted  and  lost  through  red  tape  in  the  mission  business. 
And  after  all  is  not  mission  business  part  of  the  world's 
business,  and  must  not  the  measure  of  success  depend 
largely  on  the  same  factors  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  .^^ 
Has  one  man  more  than  another  the  right  to  be  called 
"missionary,"  for  of  what  use  is  any  man  in  the  world  if 
he  has  no  mission  in  it.^^  Christ's  life  is  one  long  emphasis 
on  the  point  that  in  the  last  analysis,  when  something 
has  to  be  done,  it  is  the  individual  who  has  to  do  it  It  is, 
we  believe,  a  fact  of  paramount  importance  for  efficiency 


236  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  economy;  and  the  loyalty  of  God  in  committing 
such  trust  to  us,  when  He  presumably  knows  exactly 
how  unworthy  we  are  of  it,  is  the  explanation  of  life's 
enigma. 

When  at  last  our  food  and  freight  were  purchased  for 
the  loggers  for  the  winter  and  landed  by  the  mail  steamer 
nine  miles  from  the  mill,  the  whole  bay  was  frozen  and 
five  miles  of  ice  already  over  six  inches  thick.  The  hull  of 
the  Strathcona  was  three  eighths  of  an  inch  soft  steel; 
but  there  was  no  other  way  to  transport  the  goods  but 
on  her,  excepting  by  sledges  —  a  very  painful  and  im- 
practicable method. 

It  was  decided  that  as  we  could  not  possibly  butt 
through  the  ice,  we  must  butt  over  it.  The  whole  com- 
pany of  some  thirty  men  helped  us  to  move  everything, 
including  chains  and  anchors,  to  the  after  end  of  the  ship, 
and  to  pile  up  the  barrels  of  pork,  flour,  sugar,  molasses, 
etc.,  together  with  boats  and  all  heavy  weights,  so  that 
her  fore  foot  came  above  the  water  level  and  she  looked 
as  if  she  were  sinking  by  the  stern.  We  then  proceeded 
to  crash  into  the  ice.  Up  onto  it  we  ran,  and  then  broke 
through,  doing  no  damage  whatever  to  her  hull.  The  only 
trouble  was  that  sometimes  she  would  get  caught  fast  in 
the  trough,  and  it  was  exceedingly  hard  to  back  her 
astern  for  a  second  drive.  To  counteract  this  all  hands 
stood  on  one  rail,  each  carrying  a  weight,  and  then 
rushed  over  to  the  other  side,  backward  and  forward  at 
the  word  of  command,  thus  causing  the  steamer  to  roll. 
It  was  a  very  slow  process,  but  we  got  there,  though  in 
true  Biblical  fashion,  literally  "reeling  to  and  fro  like 
drunken  men." 

While  the  mill  was  in  its  cradle,  we  in  the  Strathcona 
were  cruising  the  northern  Labrador  waters.  We  wit- 
nessed that  year,  off  the  mighty  Kaumajets,  the  most 


THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        237 

remarkable  storm  of  lightning  that  I  have  ever  seen  in 
those  parts.  Liky  masses  hid  the  hoary  heads  of  those 
tremendous  cKffs.  Away  to  the  northwest,  over  the  high 
land  called  Saeglek,  a  lurid  light  just  marked  the  sharp 
outline  of  the  mills.  Ahead,  where  we  were  trying  to 
make  the  entrance  to  Hebron  Bay,  an  apparently  im- 
penetrable wall  persisted.  Seaward  night  had  already 
obscured  the  horizon;  but  the  moon,  hidden  behind  the 
curtain  of  the  storm,  now  and  again  fitfully  illuminated 
some  icebergs  lazily  heaving  on  the  ocean  swell.  Almost 
every  second  a  vivid  flash,  now  on  one  side,  now  on  the 
other,  would  show  us  a  glimpse  of  the  land  looming 
darkly  ahead.  The  powers  of  darkness  seemed  at  play; 
while  the  sea,  the  ice,  the  craggy  cliffs,  and  the  flashing 
heavens  were  advertising  man's  puny  power. 

An  amusing  incident  took  place  in  one  isolated  har- 
bour. A  patient  came  on  board  for  medicine,  and  after 
examining  him  I  went  below  to  make  it  up.  When  I  came 
on  deck  again  I  gave  the  medicine  to  one  I  took  to  be 
my  man,  and  then  sent  him  ashore  to  get  the  twenty- 
five  cent  fee  for  the  Mission  which  he  had  forgotten. 
No  sooner  had  he  gone  than  another  man  came  and 
asked  if  his  medicine  was  ready.  I  had  to  explain  to  him 
that  the  man  just  climbing  over  the  rail  had  it.  The  odd 
thing  was  that  the  latter,  having  paid  for  it,  positively  re- 
fused to  give  it  up.  True,  he  had  not  said  that  he  was  ill, 
but  the  medicine  looked  good  (Heaven  save  the  mark!) 
and  he  "guessed  that  it  would  suit  his  complaint  all 
right." 

At  the  mill  we  found  that  quite  a  large  part  of  the 
timberland  was  over  limestone,  while  near  our  first  dam 
there  was  some  very  white  marble.  We  fully  intended  to 
erect  a  kiln,  using  our  refuse  for  fuel,  for  the  land  is 
loaded  with  humic  acid,  and  only  plants  Hke  blueberries. 


238  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

conifers,  and  a  very  limited  flora  flourish  on  it.  Some 
friends  in  England,  however,  hearing  of  marble  in  the 
bay,  which  it  was  later  discovered  formed  an  entire 
mountain,  commenced  a  marble  mine  near  the  entrance. 
The  material  there  is  said  to  be  excellent  for  statuary. 
Even  this  small  discovery  of  natural  resources  encouraged 
us.  For  having  neither  road,  telegraph,  nor  mail  service 
to  the  mill,  we  hoped  that  the  development  of  these 
things  might  help  in  our  own  enterprise. 

For  ten  years  the  little  mill  has  run,  giving  work  to  the 
locality,  better  houses,  a  new  church  and  school,  and  in- 
deed created  a  new  village. 

The  only  trouble  with  this  North  country's  own  pe- 
culiar winter  work,  fur-hunting,  is  that  its  very  nature 
limits  its  supply.  In  my  early  days  in  the  country,  fur 
in  Labrador  was  very  cheap.  Seldom  did  even  a  silver 
fox  fetch  a  hundred  dollars.  Beaver,  lynx,  wolverine, 
wolves,  bears,  and  other  skins  were  priced  proportion- 
ately. Still,  some  men  lived  very  well  out  of  furring.  We 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  only  way  to  improve 
conditions  in  this  line  was  to  breed  some  of  the  animals 
in  captivity.  We  did  not  then  know  of  any  enterprise  of 
that  kind,  but  I  remembered  in  the  zoological  gardens 
at  Washington  seeing  a  healthy  batch  of  young  fox 
pups  born  in  captivity. 

Life  is  short.  Things  have  to  be  crowded  into  it.  So 
we  started  that  year  an  experimental  fox  farm  at  St. 
Anthony.  A  few  uprights  from  the  woods  and  some  rolls 
of  wire  are  a  fox  farm.  We  put  it  close  by  the  hospital, 
thinking  that  it  would  be  less  trouble.  The  idea,  we  re- 
joice to  know,  was  perfectly  right;  but  we  had  neither 
time,  study,  nor  experience  to  teach  us  how  to  manage 
the  animals.  Very  soon  we  had  a  dozen  couples,  red, 
white,  patch,  and  one  silver  pair.  Some  of  the  young  fox 


THE  MILL  AND  THE  FOX  FARM        239 

pups  were  very  tame,  for  I  find  an  old  record  written  by 
a  professor  of  Harvard  University,  while  he  was  on  board 
the  Strathcona  on  one  trip  when  we  were  bringing  some 
of  the  little  creatures  to  St.  Anthony.  He  describes  the 
state  of  affairs  as  follows:  "Dr.  Grenfell  at  one  time  had 
fifteen  little  foxes  aboard  which  he  was  carrying  to  St. 
Anthony  to  start  a  fox  farm  there.  Some  of  these  Httle 
animals  had  been  brought  aboard  in  blubber  casks,  and 
their  coats  were  very  sticky.  After  a  few  days  they  were 
very  tame  and  played  with  the  dogs;  were  all  over  the 
deck,  fell  down  the  companionway,  were  always  having 
their  tails  and  feet  stepped  on,  and  yelping  for  pain, 
when  not  yelling  for  food.  The  long-suffering  seaman  who 
took  care  of  them  said,  '  I  been  cleaned  out  that  fox  box. 
It  do  be  shockin'.  I  been  in  a  courageous  turmoil  my 
time,  but  dis  be  the  head  smell  ever  I  witnessed-'" 

When  the  farm  was  erected,  every  schooner  entering 
the  harbour  was  interested  in  it,  and  a  deep-cut  pathway 
soon  developed  as  the  crews  went  up  to  see  the  animals. 
The  reds  and  one  patch  were  very  tame,  and  always 
came  out  to  greet  us.  One  of  the  reds  loved  nothing  better 
than  to  be  caught  and  hugged,  and  squealed  with  delight 
like  a  child  when  you  took  notice  of  it.  The  whites,  and 
still  more  the  silvers,  were  always  very  shy;  and  though 
we  never  reared  a  single  pup,  there  were  some  born  and 
destroyed  by  the  old  ones. 

As  the  years  passed  we  decided  to  close  up  the  little 
farm,  particularly  after  a  certain  Idnd  of  sickness  which 
resembled  strychnine  poisoning  had  attacked  and  de- 
stroyed three  of  the  animals  which  were  especial  pets. 
We  then  converted  the  farm  into  a  garden  with  a  glass 
house  for  our  seedling  vegetables. 

Meanwhile  the  industry  had  been  developed  by  a  Mr. 
Beetz  in  Quebec  Labrador  with  very  marked  economic 


240  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

success;  and  in  Prince  Edward  Island  with  such  tre- 
mendous profit  that  it  soon  became  the  most  important 
industry  in  the  Province.  Enormous  prices  were  paid  for 
stock.  I  remembered  a  schooner  in  the  days  of  our  farm 
(1907)  bringing  me  in  four  live  young  silvers,  and  asking 
two  hundred  dollars  for  the  lot.  We  had  enough  animals 
and  refused  to  buy  them.  In  1914  one  of  our  distant 
neighbours,  who  had  caught  a  live  slut  in  pup,  sold  her 
with  her  little  brood  for  ten  thousand  dollars.  We  at 
once  started  an  agitation  to  encourage  the  industry 
locally,  and  the  Government  passed  regulations  that  only 
foxes  bred  in  the  Colony  could  be  exported  alive.  The 
last  wild  one  sold  was  for  twenty -five  dollars  to  a  buyer, 
and  resold  for  something  like  a  thousand  dollars  by  him. 
A  large  number  of  farms  grew  up  and  met  with  more  or 
less  success,  one  big  one  especially  in  Labrador,  which  is 
still  running.  We  saw  there  this  present  year  some  de- 
lightful little  broods,  also  some  mink  and  marten  (sables), 
the  prettiest  little  animals  to  watch  possible.  For  some 
reason  the  success  of  this  farm  so  far  has  not  been  what 
was  hoped  for  it.  Indeed,  even  in  Prince  Edward  Island 
the  furor  has  somewhat  died  down  owing  to  the  war; 
though  at  the  close  of  the  war  it  is  anticipated  that  the 
industry  will  go  on  steadily  and  profitably.  Are  not  sheep, 
angora  goats,  oxen,  and  other  animals  just  the  result  of 
similar  efforts  .^^  If  fox-farming  some  day  should  actually 
supersede  the  use  of  the  present  sharp-toothed  leg  trap, 
no  small  gain  would  have  been  effected.  A  fox  now 
trapped  in  those  horrible  teeth  remains  imprisoned  gen- 
erally till  he  perishes  of  cold,  exhaustion,  or  fear.  Though 
the  fur  trapper  as  a  rule  is  a  most  gentle  creature,  the 
**  quality  of  mercy  is  not  strained"  in  furring. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME 

"What's  that  schooner  bound  South  at  this  time  of 
year  for?"  I  asked  the  skipper  of  a  fishing  vessel  who 
had  come  aboard  for  treatment  the  second  summer  I 
was  on  the  coast. 

"I  guess,  Doctor,  that  that's  the  Yankee  what's  been 
down  North  for  a  load  of  Huskeymaws.  What  do  they 
want  with  them  when  they  gets  them?" 

"They'll  put  them  in  a  cage  and  show  them  at  ten 
cents  a  head.  They're  taking  them  to  the  World's  Fair 
in  Chicago." 

People  of  every  sort  crowded  to  see  the  popular  Es- 
kimo Encampment  on  the  Midway.  The  most  taking 
attraction  among  the  groups  displayed  was  a  little  boy, 
son  of  a  Northern  Chieftain,  Kaiachououk  by  name; 
and  many  a  nickel  was  thrown  into  the  ring  that  httle 
Prince  Pomiuk  might  show  his  dexterity  with  the  thirty- 
foot  lash  of  his  dog  whip. 

One  man  alone  of  all  who  came  to  stare  at  the  little 
people  from  far-off  Labrador  took  a  real  interest  in  the 
child.  It  was  the  Rev.  C.  C.  Carpenter,  who  had  spent 
many  years  of  his  life  as  a  clergyman  on  the  Labrador 
coast.  But  one  day  Mr.  Carpenter  missed  his  little 
friend.  Pomiuk  was  found  on  a  bed  of  sickness  in  his 
dark  hut.  An  injury  to  his  thigh  had  led  to  the  onset 
of  an  insidious  hip  disease. 

The  Exhibition  closed  soon  after,  and  the  Eskimos 
went  north.  But  Pomiuk  was  not  forgotten,  and  Mr. 
Carpenter  sent  him  letter  after  letter,  though  he  never 


242  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

received  an  answer.  The  first  year  the  band  of  Eskimos 
reached  as  far  north  as  Ramah,  but  Pomiuk's  increasing 
sufferings  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  take  him  far- 
ther that  season. 

Meanwhile  in  June,  1895,  we  again  steamed  out 
through  the  Narrows  of  St.  John's  Harbour,  deter- 
mined to  push  as  far  north  as  the  farthest  white  family. 
A  dark  foggy  night  in  August  found  us  at  the  entrance 
of  that  marvellous  gorge  called  Nakvak.  We  pushed  our 
way  cautiously  in  some  twenty  miles  from  the  entrance. 
Suddenly  the  watch  sang  out,  "Light  on  the  starboard 
bow! "  and  the  sound  of  our  steamer  whistle  echoed  and 
reechoed  in  endless  cadences  between  those  mighty 
cliffs.  Three  rifle  shots  answered  us,  soon  a  boat  bumped 
our  side,  and  a  hearty  Englishman  sprang  over  the 
rail. 

It  was  George  Ford,  factor  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany at  that  post.  During  the  evening's  talk  he  told 
me  of  a  group  of  Eskimos  still  farther  up  the  fjord  having 
with  them  a  dying  boy.  Next  day  I  had  my  first  glimpse 
of  little  Prince  Pomiuk.  We  found  him  naked  and  hag- 
gard, lying  on  the  rocks  beside  the  tiny  "tubik." 

The  Eskimos  were  only  too  glad  to  be  rid  of  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  sick  lad,  and,  furthermore,  he  was 
"no  good  fishing."  So  the  next  day  saw  us  steaming 
south  again,  carrying  with  us  the  boy  and  his  one  treas- 
ured possession  —  a  letter  from  a  clergyman  at  Andover, 
Massachusetts.  It  contained  a  photograph,  and  when 
I  showed  it  to  Pomiuk  he  said,  "Me  even  love  him." 

A  letter  was  sent  to  the  address  given,  and  some 
weeks  later  came  back  an  answer.  "Keep  him,"  it  said. 
"He  must  never  know  cold  and  loneliness  again.  I  write 
for  a  certain  magazine,  and  the  children  in  'The  Corner* 
will  become  his  guardians."  Thus  the  "Corner  Cot"  was 


THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME  243 

founded,  and  occupied  by  the  little  Eskimo  Prince  for 
the  brief  remainder  of  his  life. 

On  my  return  the  following  summer  the  child 's  joyful 
laughter  greeted  me  as  he  said,  "Me  Gabriel  Pomiuk 
now."  A  good  Moravian  Brother  had  come  along  during 
the  winter  and  christened  the  child  by  the  name  of  the 
angel  of  comfort. 

In  a  sheltered  corner  of  a  little  graveyard  on  the  La- 
brador coast  rests  the  tiny  body  of  this  true  prince. 
When  he  died  the  doctor  in  charge  of  the  hospital  wrote 
me  that  the  building  seemed  desolate  without  his  smiling, 
happy  face  and  unselfish  presence.  The  night  that  he 
was  buried  the  mysterious  aurora  lit  up  the  vault  of 
heaven.  The  Innuits,  children  of  the  Northland,  call 
it  "the  spirits  of  the  dead  at  play."  But  it  seemed  to  us 
a  shining  symbol  of  the  joy  in  the  City  of  the  King  that 
another  young  soldier  had  won  his  way  home. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  undoubtedly  correct 
in  stating  that  the  first  seven  years  of  his  life  makes  the 
child.  Missions  have  always  emphasized  the  importance 
of  the  children  from  a  purely  propaganda  point  of  view. 
But  our  Children's  Home  was  not  begun  for  any  such 
reason.  Like  Topsy,  "it  just  grow'd."  I  had  been  sum- 
moned to  a  lonely  headland,  fifty  miles  from  our  hos- 
pital at  Indian  Harbour,  to  see  a  very  sick  family. 
Among  the  spruce  trees  in  a  small  hut  lived  a  Scotch 
salmon  fisher,  his  wife  and  five  little  children.  When  we 
anchored  off  the  promontory  we  were  surprised  to  re- 
ceive no  signs  of  welcome.  When  we  landed  and  entered 
the  house  we  found  the  mother  dead  on  the  bed  and 
the  father  lying  on  the  floor  dying.  Next  morning  we 
improvised  two  cofiSns,  contributed  from  the  wardrobes 
of  all  hands  enough  black  material  for  a  "  seemly  "  funeral. 


244  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  later,  steaming  up  the  bay  to  a  sandy  stretch  of 
land,  buried  the  two  parents  with  all  the  ceremonies 
of  the  Church  —  and  found  ourselves  left  with  five  little 
mortals  in  black  sitting  on  the  grave  mound.  We  thought 
that  we  had  done  all  that  could  be  expected  of  a  doctor, 
but  we  now  found  the  difference.  It  looked  as  if  God  ex- 
pected more.  An  uncle  volunteered  to  assume  one  little 
boy  and  we  sailed  away  with  the  remainder  of  the  chil- 
dren. Having  no  place  to  keep  them,  we  wrote  to  a  friendly 
newspaper  in  New  England  and  advertised  for  foster 
parents.  One  person  responded.  A  young  farmer's  wife 
wrote:  "I  am  just  married  to  a  farmer  in  the  country, 
and  miss  the  chance  to  teach  children  in  Sunday-School, 
or  even  to  get  to  church,  it  is  so  far  away.  I  think  that  I 
can  feed  two  children  for  the  Lord's  sake.  If  you  will 
send  them  along,  I  will  see  that  they  do  not  want  for 
anything."  We  shipped  two,  and  began  what  developed 
into  our  Children's  Home  with  the  balance  of  the  stock. 

We  had  everything  to  learn  in  the  rearing  of  children, 
having  had  only  the  hygienic  side  of  their  development 
to  attend  to  previously.  One  of  the  two  which  we  kept 
turned  out  very  well,  becoming  a  fully  trained  nurse. 
The  other  failed.  Both  of  those  who  went  to  New  Eng- 
land did  well,  the  superior  discipline  of  their  foster 
mother  being  no  doubt  responsible.  The  following  fall  I 
made  a  special  journey  to  see  the  latter.  It  was  a  small 
farm  on  which  they  lived,  and  a  little  baby  had  just  ar- 
rived. Only  high  ideals  could  have  persuaded  the  woman 
to  accept  the  added  responsibility.  The  children  were 
as  bright  and  jolly  as  possible. 

Among  the  other  functions  which  have  fallen  to  my 
lot  to  perform  is  the  ungrateful  task  of  unpaid  magis- 
trate, or  justice  of  the  peace.  In  this  capacity  a  little 
later  I  was  called  on  to  try  a  mother,  who  in  a  Labrador 


THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME  245 

village  had  become  a  widow  and  later  married  a  man 
with  six  children  who  refused  to  accept  her  three-year- 
old  little  girl.  When  I  happened  along,  the  baby  was 
living  alone  in  the  mother's  old  shack,  a  mud- walled 
hut,  and  she  or  the  neighbours  went  in  and  tended  it 
as  they  could.  None  of  the  few  neighbours  wanted  per- 
manently to  assume  the  added  expense  of  the  child,  so 
dared  not  accept  it  temporarily.  It  was  sitting  happily 
on  the  floor  playing  with  a  broken  saucer  when  I  came 
in.  It  showed  no  fear  of  a  stranger;  indeed,  it  made  most 
friendly  overtures.  I  had  no  right  to  send  the  new  hus- 
band to  jail.  I  could  not  fine  him,  for  he  had  no  money. 
There  was  no  jail  in  Labrador,  anyhow.  My  special  con- 
stable was  a  very  stout  fisherman,  a  family  man,  who 
proposed  to  nurse  the  child  till  I  could  get  it  to  some 
place  where  it  could  be  properly  looked  after.  When  we 
steamed  away,  we  had  the  baby  lashed  into  a  swing  cot. 
It  became  very  rough,  and  the  baby,  of  course,  crawled 
out  and  was  found  in  the  scuppers.  It  did  everything 
that  it  ought  not  to  do,  but  which  we  knew  that  it  would. 
But  we  got  it  to  the  hospital  at  last  and  the  nurse  re- 
ceived it  right  to  her  heart. 

In  various  ways  my  family  grew  at  an  alarming  rate, 
once  the  general  principle  was  established.  On  my  early 
summer  voyage  to  the  east  coast  of  Labrador  I  found 
at  Indian  Harbour  Hospital  a  little  girl  of  four.  In  the 
absence  of  her  father,  who  was  hunting,  and  while  her 
mother  lay  sick  in  bed,  she  had  crawled  out  of  the 
house  and  when  found  in  the  snow  had  both  legs  badly 
frozen.  They  became  gangrenous  halfway  to  the  knee,, 
and  her  father  had  been  obliged  to  chop  them  both  off. 
An  operation  gave  her  good  stumps;  but  what  use  was 
she  in  Labrador  with  no  legs?  So  she  joined  our  family, 
and  we  gave  her  such  good  new  limbs  that  when  I  brought 


246  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

her  into  Government  House  at  Halifax,  where  one  of  our 
nurses  had  taken  her  to  school  temporarily,  and  she 
ran  into  the  room  with  two  other  little  girls,  the  Gov- 
ernor could  scarcely  tell  which  was  our  Httle  cripple 
Kirkina. 

The  following  fall  as  we  left  for  the  South  our  good 
friend,  the  chief  factor  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company, 
told  me  that  on  an  island  in  the  large  inlet  known  to  us 
as  Eskimo  Bay  a  native  family,  both  hungry  and  naked, 
were  living  literally  under  the  open  sky.  We  promised 
to  try  and  find  them  and  help  them  with  some  warm 
clothing. 

Having  steamed  round  the  island  and  seen  no  signs 
of  life,  we  were  on  the  point  of  leaving  when  a  tiny  smoke 
column  betrayed  the  presence  of  human  life  —  and  with 
my  family-man  mate  we  landed  as  a  search  party. 
Against  the  face  of  a  sheer  rock  a  single  sheet  of  light  cot- 
ton duck  covered  the  abode  of  a  woman  with  a  nursing 
baby.  They  were  the  only  persons  at  home.  The  three 
boys  and  a  father  comprised  the  remainder  of  the  family. 
We  soon  found  the  two  small  boys.  They  were  practically 
stark  naked,  but  fat  as  curlews,  being  full  of  wild  berries 
with  which  their  bodies  were  stained  bright  blues  and 
reds.  They  were  a  jolly  little  couple,  as  unconcerned  about 
their  environment  as  Robinson  Crusoe  after  five  years 
on  his  island.  Soon  the  father  came  home.  I  can  see  him 
still  —  the  vacant  brown  face  of  a  very  feeble-minded 
half-breed,  ragged  and  tattered  and  almost  bootless. 
He  was  carrying  an  aged  single-barrelled  boy's  gun  in 
one  hand  and  a  belated  sea-gull  in  the  other,  which  bird 
was  destined  for  the  entire  evening  meal  of  the  family. 
A  half-wild-looking  hobbledehoy  boy  of  fifteen  years 
also  joined  the  group. 

It  was  just  beginning  to  snow,  a  wet  sleet.  Eight 


THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME  247 

months  of  winter  lay  ahead.  Yet  not  one  of  the  family 
seemed  to  think  a  whit  about  that  which  was  vivid 
enough  to  the  minds  of  the  mate  and  myself.  We  sat 
down  for  a  regular  pow-w^ow  beside  the  fire  sputtering 
in  the  open  room,  from  which  thick  smoke  crept  up  the 
face  of  the  rock,  and  hung  over  us  in  a  material  but  sym- 
bolic cloud.  It  was  naturally  cold.  The  man  began  with 
a  plea  for  some  "clodin."  We  began  with  a  plea  for  some 
children.  How  many  would  he  swap  for  a  start  in  clothing 
and  "tings  for  his  winter".'*  He  picked  out  and  gave  us 
Jimmie.  The  soft-hearted  mate,  on  whose  cheeks  the 
tears  were  literally  standing,  grabbed  Jimmie  —  as  the 
latter  did  his  share  of  the  gull.  But  we  were  not  satisfied. 
We  had  to  have  Willie.  It  was  only  when  a  brealdng  of 
diplomatic  relations  altogether  was  threatened  that 
Willie  was  sacrificed  on  the  altar  of  "tings."  I  forget  the 
price,  but  I  think  that  we  threw  in  an  axe,  which  was 
one  of  the  trifles  which  the  father  lacked  —  and  in  this 
of  all  countries !  The  word  was  no  sooner  spoken  than  our 
shellback  again  excelled  himself.  He  pounced  on  Willie 
like  a  hawk  on  its  prey,  and  before  the  treaty  was  really 
concluded  he  was  off  to  our  dory  with  a  naked  boy  kick- 
ing violently  in  the  vice  of  each  of  his  powerful  arms. 
The  grasping  strength  of  our  men,  reared  from  child- 
hood to  haul  heavy  strains  and  ponderous  anchors,  is 
phenomenal. 

Whatever  sins  Labrador  has  been  guilty  of,  Malthu- 
sianism  is  not  in  the  category.  Nowhere  are  there  larger 
families.  Those  of  Quebec  Labrador,  which  is  better 
known,  are  of  almost  world-wide  fame.  God  is,  to  Labra- 
dor thinking,  the  Giver  of  all  children.  Man's  responsi- 
bility is  merely  to  do  the  best  he  can  to  find  food  and 
clothing  for  them.  A  man  can  accomplish  only  so  much. 
If  these  "gifts  of  God"  suffer  and  are  a  burden  to  others 


248  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

that  is  kismet.  It  is  the  animal  philosophy  and  makes 
women's  Hves  on  this  coast  terribly  hard.  The  oppor- 
tunity for  service  along  child-welfare  lines  is  therefore 
not  surprising  from  this  angle  also. 

One  day,  passing  a  group  of  islands,  we  anchored  in 
a  bight  known  as  Rogues'  Roost.  It  so  happened  that 
a  man  who  many  years  before  had  shot  off  his  right  arm, 
and  had  followed  up  his  incapacity  with  a  large  family 
of  dependants,  had  just  died.  Life  cannot  be  expected 
to  last  long  in  Labrador  under  those  conditions.  There 
were  four  children,  one  being  a  big  boy  who  could  help 
out.  The  rest  were  offered  as  a  contribution  to  the 
Mission.  A  splendid  Newfoundland  fisherman  and  his 
wife  had  a  summer  fishing  station  here,  and  with  that 
generous  open-heartedness  which  is  characteristic  of 
our  seafarers,  they  were  only  too  anxious  to  help.  "Of 
course,  she  would  make  clothing  while  I  was  North"  — 
out  of  such  odd  garments  as  a  general  collection  pro- 
duced. "She  would  n't  think  of  letting  them  wear  it  till 
I  came  along  South,  not  she."  She  would  "put  them  in 
the  tub  as  soon  as  she  heard  our  whistle."  When  after 
the  long  summer's  work  we  landed  and  went  up  to  her 
little  house,  three  shining,  red,  naked  children  were 
drying  before  a  large  stove,  in  which  the  last  vestige  of 
connection  with  their  past  was  contributing  its  quota 
of  calories  toward  the  send-off.  A  few  minutes  later  we 
were  off  to  the  ship  with  as  sweet  a  batch  of  jolly, 
black-haired,  dark-eyed  kiddies  as  one  could  wish  for. 
Our  good  friend  could  not  keep  back  the  tears  as  she 
kissed  them  good-bye  on  deck.  The  boy  has  already  put 
in  three  years  on  the  Western  Front.  The  girls  have  both 
been  educated,  the  elder  having  had  two  years  finishing 
at  the  Pratt  Institute  in  New  York. 

A  grimy  note  saying,  "Please  call  in  to  Bird  Island  as 


THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME  249 

you  pass  and  see  the  sick,"  brought  me  our  next  dona- 
tion. "There  be  something  wrong  with  Mrs.  B's  twins. 
Doctor,"  greeted  me  on  landing.  "Seems  as  if  they  was 
like  kittens,  and  could  n't  see  yet  a  wink."  It  was  only 
too  true.  The  little  twin  girls  were  bom  blind  in  both 
eyes.  What  could  they  do  in  Labrador.?  Two  more  for 
our  family  without  any  question.  After  leaving  our  Or- 
phanage, these  two  went  through  the  beautiful  school 
for  the  blind  at  Halifax,  and  are  now  able  to  make  their 
own  living  in  the  world. 

So  the  roll  swelled.  Some  came  because  they  were  or- 
phans; some  because  they  were  not.  Thus,  poor  Sammy. 
The  home  from  which  he  came  was  past  description. 
From  the  outside  it  looked  like  a  tumble-down  shed. 
Inside  there  appeared  to  be  but  one  room,  which  meas- 
ured six  by  twelve  feet,  and  a  small  lean-to.  The  family 
consisted  of  father  and  mother  and  three  children.  The 
eldest  boy  was  about  twelve,  then  came  Sam,  and  lastly 
a  wee  girl  of  five,  with  pretty  curly  fair  hair,  but  very 
thin  and  delicate-looking.  She  seemed  to  be  half-starved 
and  thoroughly  neglected.  The  father  was  a  ne'er-do- 
well  and  the  mother  an  imbecile  who  has  since  died  of 
tuberculosis.  The  filth  inside  was  awful.  The  house  was 
built  of  logs,  and  the  spaces  in  between  them  were  partly 
filled  in  with  old  rags  and  moss.  The  roof  leaked.  The 
room  seemed  to  be  alive  with  vermin,  as  were  also  the 
whole  family.  The  two  boys  were  simply  clothed  in  a  pair 
of  men's  trousers  apiece  and  a  dilapidated  pair  of  boots 
between  them.  The  trousers  they  found  very  hard  to 
keep  on  and  had  to  give  them  frequent  hoists  up.  They 
were  both  practically  destitute  of  underclothing.  To  hide 
all  deficiencies,  they  each  wore  a  woman's  long  jacket 
of  the  oldest  style  possible  and  green  with  age,  which 
reached  down  to  their  heels.  Round  their  waists  they 


250  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

each  wore  a  skin  strap.  They  were  stripped  of  their  rags, 
and  made  to  scrub  themselves  in  the  stream  and  then 
indoors  before  putting  on  their  new  clean  clothes.  Sammy 
and  the  little  sister  joined  the  family. 

One  of  our  boys  is  from  Cape  Chidley  itself;  others 
come  from  as  far  south  and  west  as  Bay  of  Islands  in 
South  Newfoundland.  So  many  erroneous  opinions 
seem  to  persist  regarding  the  difference  between  New- 
foundland and  Labrador  that  I  am  constantly  asked: 
"But  why  do  you  have  a  Children's  Home  in  New- 
foundland? Can't  the  Newfoundlanders  look  out  for 
themselves  and  their  dependent  children?"  As  I  have 
tried  to  make  clear  in  a  previous  chapter  North  and 
South  Newfoundland  should  be  sharply  differentiated 
as  to  wealth,  education,  climate,  and  opportunity. 
Though  for  purposes  of  efficiency  and  economy  the  ac- 
tual building  of  the  Home  is  situated  in  the  north  end 
of  the  northern  peninsula  of  Newfoundland,  the  chil- 
dren who  make  up  the  family  are  drawn  almost  entirely 
from  the  Labrador  side  of  the  Straits;  unless,  as  is  often 
the  case,  the  poverty  and  destitution  of  a  so-called  New- 
foundland family  on  the  south  side  of  Belle  Isle  makes  it 
impossible  to  leave  children  under  such  conditions. 

It  is  obvious  that  something  had  to  be  built  to  accom- 
modate the  galaxy;  and  some  one  secured  who  under- 
stood the  problem  of  running  the  Home.  She  —  how 
often  it  is  "she"  —  was  found  in  England,  a  volunteer 
by  the  name  of  Miss  Eleanor  Storr.  She  was  a  true 
Christian  lady  and  a  trained  worker  as  well.  The  build- 
ing during  the  years  grew  with  the  family,  so  that  it  is 
really  a  wonder  of  odds  and  patches.  The  generosity  of 
one  of  our  volunteers,  Mr.  Francis  Sayre,  the  son-in-law 
of  President  Wilson,  doubled  its  capacity.  But  buildings 
that  are  made  of  green  wood,  and  grow  like  Topsy,  are 


INSIDE  THE  ORPHANAGE 


THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME  251 

apt  to  end  like  Topsy  —  turvy.  Now  we  are  straining 
every  nerve  to  obtain  a  suitable  accommodation  for  the 
children.  We  sorely  need  a  brick  building,  economically 
laid  out  and  easily  kept  warm,  with  separate  wings  for 
girls  and  boys  and  a  creche  for  babies.  Miss  Storr  was 
obliged  to  leave  us,  and  now  for  over  six  years  a  splendid 
and  unselfish  English  lady,  Miss  Katie  Spalding,  has 
been  helping  to  solve  this  most  important  of  all  prob- 
lems —  the  preparation  of  the  next  generation  to  make 
their  land  and  the  world  a  more  fit  place  in  which  to  live. 
Miss  Spalding's  contribution  to  this  country  has  lain 
not  only  in  her  influence  on  the  children  and  her  un- 
ceasing care  of  them,  but  she  has  given  her  counsel  and 
assistance  in  other  problems  of  the  Mission,  where  also 
her  judgment,  experience,  and  wisdom  have  proven  in- 
valuable. 

There  is  yet  another  side  of  the  orphanage  problem. 
We  have  been  obliged,  due  to  the  lack  of  any  boarding- 
school,  to  accept  bright  children  from  isolated  homes 
so  as  to  give  them  a  chance  in  life.  It  has  been  the  truest 
of  love  messages  to  several.  The  children  always  repay, 
whether  the  parents  pay  anything  or  not;  and  as  so 
much  of  the  care  of  them  is  volunteer,  and  friends  have 
assumed  the  expenses  of  a  number  of  the  children,  the 
budget  has  never  been  unduly  heavy.  They  do  all  their 
own  work,  and  thanks  to  the  inestimably  valuable  help 
of  the  Needlework  Guild  of  America  through  its  Labra- 
dor branch,  the  clothing  item  has  been  made  possible. 
In  summer  we  use  neither  boots  nor  stockings  for  the 
children  unless  absolutely  necessary.  Our  harbour  people 
still  look  on  that  practice  askance;  but  ours  are  the 
healthiest  lot  of  children  on  the  coast,  and  their  brown 
bare  legs  and  tough,  well-shaped  feet  are  a  great  asset 
to  their  resistance  to  tuberculosis,  their  arch-enemy,  and 


252  A  LABRADOR  DCX^TOR 

no  small  addition  to  the  attraction  of  their  merry  faces 
and  hatless  heads. 

Even  though  Gabriel,  Prince  Pomiuk,  never  lived 
within  its  walls,  the  real  beginning  of  the  idea  of  our 
Children's  Home  was  due  to  him;  and  one  feels  sure 
that  his  spirit  loves  to  visit  the  other  little  ones  who 
claim  this  lonely  coast  as  their  homeland  also. 

The  one  test  for  surgery  which  we  allow  in  these  days 
is  its  "end  results."  Patients  must  not  be  advertised 
as  cured  till  they  have  survived  the  treatment  many 
years.  Surely  that  is  man's  as  well  as  God's  test.  Cer- 
tainly it  is  the  gauge  of  the  outlay  in  child  life.  What  is 
the  good  of  it  all?  Does  it  pay?  In  the  gift  of  increasing 
joy  to  us,  in  its  obvious  humanity  and  in  its  continuous 
inspiration,  it  certainly  does  make  the  work  of  life  here 
in  every  branch  the  better. 

The  solution  of  the  problem  of  inducing  the  peace  of 
God  and  the  Kingdom  of  God  into  our  "parish"  is  most 
likely  to  be  solved  by  wise  and  persevering  work  among 
the  children.  For  in  them  lies  the  hope  of  the  future  of 
this  country,  and  their  true  education  and  upbringing  to 
fit  them  for  wise  citizenship  have  been  cruelly  neglected 
in  this  "outpost  of  Empire." 

Another  menace  to  the  future  welfare  of  the  coast  has 
been  the  lack  of  careful  instruction  and  suitable  oppor- 
tunities for  the  development,  physical,  mental,  and  spir- 
itual, of  its  girls.  Without  an  educated  and  enlightened 
womanhood,  no  country,  no  matter  how  favored  by  ma- 
terial prosperity^  can  hope  to  take  its  place  as  a  factor  in 
the  progress  of  the  world.  In  our  orphanage  and  educa- 
tional work  we  have  tried  to  keep  these  two  ideas  con- 
stantly before  us,  and  to  offer  incentives  to  and  oppor- 
tunities for  useful  life-work  in  whatever  branch,  from 
the  humblest  to  the  highest,  a  child  showed  aptitude. 


THE  CHILDREN'S  HOME  253 

Through  the  vision,  ability,  and  devotion  of  Miss 
Storr,  Miss  Spalding,  and  their  helpers,  in  training  the 
characters  as  well  as  the  bodies  of  the  children  at  the 
Home,  and  by  the  generous  support  of  friends  of  children 
elsewhere,  we  have  been  able  to  turn  out  each  year  from 
its  walls  young  men  and  women  better  fitted  to  cope 
with  the  difficult  problems  of  this  environment,  and  to 
offer  to  its  service  that  best  of  all  gifts  —  useful  and  con- 
secrated personalities. 


CHAPTEE  XV 

PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION 

Every  child  should  be  washed.  Every  child  should 
be  educated.  The  only  question  is  how  to  get  there.  The 
"why's"  of  life  interest  chiefly  the  academic  mind.  The 
"how's"  interest  every  one.  It  is  a  pleasure  sometimes 
to  be  out  in  dirty  weather  on  a  lee  shore;  it  permits  you 
to  devote  all  your  energies  to  accomplishing  something. 
When  secretary  for  our  hospital  rowing  club  on  the 
Thames,  a  fine  cup  was  given  for  competition  by  Sir 
Frederick  Treves  on  terms  symbolic  of  his  attitude  to 
life.  The  race  was  to  be  in  ordinary  punts  with  a  cox- 
swain "in  order  that  every  ounce  of  energy  should  be 
devoted  to  the  progress  of  the  boat." 

That  is  the  whole  trouble  with  the  Newfoundland 
Labrador.  All  moneys  granted  for  education  are  handed 
to  the  churches  for  sectarian  schools.  It  is  almost  writing 
ourselves  down  as  still  living  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when 
the  Clergy  had  a  monopoly  of  polite  learning.  In  more 
densely  populated  countries  this  division  of  grants  need 
not  be  so  disastrous.  Here  it  means  that  one  often  finds 
a  Roman  Catholic,  a  Church  of  England,  a  Methodist, 
and  a  Salvation  Army  school,  all  in  one  little  village  — 
and  no  school  whatever  in  the  adjoining  place. 

The  denominational  spirit,  fostered  by  these  sec- 
tarian schools  and  societies,  is  so  emphasized  that 
Catholic  and  Protestant  have  little  in  common.  Some 
preferred  to  let  their  children  or  themselves  suffer  pain 
and  inefficiency,  rather  than  come  for  relief  to  a  hospital 
where  the  doctors  were  Protestant.  This  has  in  some 
measure  passed  away,  but  it  was  painfully  real  at  first  — 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  ^55 

so  much  so  that  once  a  rickety,  crippled  child,  easily- 
cured,  though  he  actually  came  to  the  harbour,  was  for- 
bidden to  land  and  returned  home  to  be  a  cripple  for  life. 

The  salaries  available  offer  no  attraction  to  enter  the 
teaching  profession  in  this  island;  and  there  is  no  com- 
pulsory education  law  to  assist  those  who  with  lofty 
motives  remain  loyal  to  the  profession  when  "better 
chances"  come  along.  Gauged  rightly,  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  better  chance  for  fulfilling  life 's  purposes  than 
an  education;  and  modern  conditions  concede  the  right 
of  a  decent  living  wage  to  all  who  render  service  to  the 
world  in  whatever  line. 

In  the  little  village  where  are  our  headquarters  there 
was  already  a  Church  of  England  and  a  Methodist  school 
when  we  came  there,  and  a  Salvation  Army  one  has 
since  been  added.  Threats  of  still  another  "institution 
of  learning  "  menaced  us  at  one  time  —  almost  like  a 
new  Egyptian  plague,  with  more  permanency  of  results 
thrown  in. 

If  the  motor  power  of  the  school  boat  is  dissipated  in 
sectarian  religious  education,  not  to  say  focussed  on  it, 
the  arrival  of  the  cargo  must  be  seriously  handicapped. 
The  statistical  returns  may  show  a  majority  of  our  fisher- 
men as  "able  to  read  and  write";  but  as  a  matter  of  fact 
the  illiteracy  and  ignorance  of  North  Newfoundland  and 
Labrador  is  the  greatest  handicap  in  the  lives  of  the 
people. 

My  first  scholar  came  from  North  Labrador,  long 
before  we  aspired  to  a  school  of  our  own.  He  was  a  lad 
of  Scotch  extraction  and  name,  and  came  aboard  the  hos- 
pital ship  one  night,  as  she  lay  at  anchor  among  some 
northern  islands,  with  the  request  that  we  would  take 
him  up  with  us  to  some  place  where  he  could  get  an  hour 's 
schooling  a  day.  He  offered  to  work  all  the  rest  of  the  time 


256  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

in  return  for  his  food  and  clothing.  To-day  he  holds  a 
Pratt  certificate,  is  head  of  our  machine  shop,  has  a  sheet- 
metal  working  factory  of  his  own  which  fills  a  most 
valuable  purpose  on  the  shore,  is  general  consultant  for 
the  coast  in  matters  of  engineering,  as  well  as  being  the 
Government  surveyor  for  his  district.  He  is  also  chief 
musician  for  the  church,  having  fitted  himself  for  both 
those  latter  posts  in  his  "spare  time."  The  inspiration 
which  his  life  has  been  is  in  itself  an  education  to  many 
of  us  —  a  reflex  result  which  is  the  really  highest  value 
of  all  life. 

As  each  transferred  individual  has  come  back  North 
for  service,  desire  has  at  once  manifested  itself  for  simi- 
lar privileges  in  young  people  who  had  not  previously 
shown  even  interest  enough  to  attend  our  winter  night 
schools.  This  is  the  best  evidence  that  inroads  are  being 
made  into  that  natural  apathy  which  is  content  with 
mediocrity  or  even  inferiority.  This  is  everywhere  the 
world's  most  subtle  enemy.  Even  if  selfishness  or  envy 
has  been  the  motive,  the  fact  remains  that  they  have 
often  kindled  that  discontent  with  the  past  which  Charles 
Kingsley  preached  as  necessary  to  all  progress.  Nowhere 
could  the  pathology  of  the  matter  be  more  easily  traced 
than  in  these  concrete  examples  carrying  the  infection 
which  could  come  from  no  other  quarter  into  our  isola- 
tion. It  has  been  in  very  humble  life  an  example  of  the 
return  of  the  "Yankee  to  the  Court  of  King  Arthur.'* 

There  was  a  time  when  Lord  Haldane  proposed  that 
every  English  child,  who  in  the  Board  schools  had  proved 
his  ability  to  profit  by  it,  should  be  given  a  college  or 
university  education  at  the  expense  of  the  State  —  as 
a  remunerative  outlay  for  the  nation.  This  proposal 
was  turned  down  as  being  too  costly,  though  the  expend- 
iture for  a  single  day's  ninnng  of  this  war  would  have 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  257 

gone  a  long  way  to  provide  such  a  fund.  We  now  know 
that  it  can  be  done  and  must  be  done  as  a  sign  manual 
of  real  freedom,  which  is  not  the  leaving  of  parents  or 
forbears,  incompetent  for  any  reason,  free  to  damn  their 
country  with  a  stream  of  stunted  intellects. 

America  has  already  honoured  herself  forever  by 
being  a  pioneer  in  this  movement  for  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  the  people.  Religion  surely  need  not  fear  mental 
enlightenment.  The  dangers  of  life  lie  in  ignorance,  and 
after  all  is  not  true  religion  a  thing  of  the  intellect  as 
well  as  of  the  heart?  Can  that  really  be  inculcated  in 
*'  two  periods  of  forty  minutes  each  week  devoted  to  sec- 
tarian teaching,"  which  was  one  of  the  concessions  de- 
manded of  us  in  our  fight  for  a  free  public  or  common 
school  at  St.  Anthony?  My  own  mental  picture  of  myself 
at  the  age  of  seven  sitting  on  a  bench  for  forty  minutes 
twice  every  week  learning  to  be  "religious"  made  me 
sympathize  with  Scrooge  when  the  Ghost  of  the  Past 
was  paying  him  a  visit. 

One  thing  was  certain.  The  young  lives  entrusted  to 
us  were  having  as  good  medical  care  for  their  bodies 
as  we  could  provide;  and  if  we  could  compass  it,  we 
were  going  to  have  that  paralleled  for  their  minds.  The 
parents  of  the  village  children  could  do  as  they  liked 
with  those  committed  to  them  —  and  they  did  it.  There 
is  nothing  so  thoroughly  reactionary  that  I  know  of  as 
religious  prejudice  well  ground  in.  As  regards  the  treat- 
ment of  physical  ailments  the  prejudices  of  what  Dr. 
Holmes  called  "Homoeopathy  and  Kindred  Delusions'* 
always  are  strong  in  proportion  as  they  are  impreg- 
nated with  some  religious  bias. 

Our  efforts  to  combine  the  local  schools  having  failed, 
we  had  to  provide  a  building  of  our  own.  This  we  felt 
must  be  planned  for  the  future.  For  some  day  the  halcyon 


258  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

days  of  peace  on  earth  shall  be  permitted  in  our  com- 
munity, and  the  true  loyalty  of  efficient  service  to  our 
brothers  will,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  become  actually  the 
paramount  object  of  our  Christian  religion.  Perhaps 
this  terrible  war  will  have  convinced  the  world  that  the 
loftiest  aspirations  of  mankind  are  no  more  to  save  your- 
self hereafter  than  here.  Is  it  not  as  true  as  ever  that  if 
we  are  not  ourselves  possessors  of  Christ's  spirit,  our- 
selves we  cannot  save.f* 

The  only  schoolhouse  available,  anyhow,  was  not 
nearly  so  good  a  building  as  that  which  we  have  since 
provided  for  the  accommodation  of  our  pigs!  Fat  pork 
is  considered  an  absolute  essential  "down  North";  and 
it  was  cheaper  and  safer,  according  to  Upton  Sinclair, 
to  raise  pigs  than  buy  the  salted  or  tinned  article.  So 
we  had  instituted  what  we  deemed  a  missionary  enter- 
prise in  that  line.  {Pace  our  vegetarian  friends.) 

As  soon  as  a  sum  of  three  thousand  dollars  had  been 
raised,  architect  friends  at  the  Pratt  Institute  sent  down 
to  us  competitive  designs,  and  one  of  our  Labrador  boys, 
who  had  studied  there,  erected  the  building.  Having 
at  the  beginning  no  funds  whatever  for  current  expenses, 
we  had  to  look  for  volunteer  teachers.  One  denomina- 
tion helped  with  part  of  its  harbour  grant,  but  the  Gov- 
ernment would  not  make  any  special  donation  toward 
the  union  school  project.  Even  the  caput  grant,  to  which 
we  had  hoped  that  we  were  entitled  for  our  own  or- 
phanage children,  had  by  law  to  go  to  the  denomination 
to  which  their  parents  had  belonged.  This  was  not  al- 
ways easy  to  decide  correctly.  On  the  occasion  of  taking 
the  last  census  in  Labrador,  a  well-dressed  stranger  sud- 
denly visited  one  of  our  settlements  on  the  east  coast. 
It  so  happened  that  a  very  poor  man  with  a  large  and 
growing  family  of  eight  children  under  ten  years,  who 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  259 

resided  there,  was  not  so  loyal  to  his  church  as  we  are 
taught  we  ought  to  be.  When  the  stranger  entered  his 
tilt  a  vision  of  material  favours  to  be  obtained  was  the 
dominant  idea  in  the  fisherman's  mind.  He  was  there- 
fore on  tenterhooks  all  the  while  that  the  questioning 
was  going  on  lest  some  blunder  of  his  might  alienate  the 
sympathy  on  which  he  was  banking  for  "getting  his 
share."  At  length  it  came  to  the  momentous  point  of 
"What  denomination  do  you  belong  to? "  —  a  very  vital 
matter  when  it  comes  to  sympathy  and  sharing  up.  In 
some  hesitation  he  gazed  at  the  row  of  his  eight  un- 
washed and  but  half-clad  offspring,  whose  treacly  faces 
gaped  open-mouthed  at  the  visitor.  Then  with  sudden 
inspiration  he  decided  to  play  for  safety,  and  replied, 
"Half  of  them  is  Church  of  England,  and  half  is  Metho- 
dist!" 

Being  an  unrecognized  school,  and  so  far  off,  some 
years  went  by  before  the  innovation  of  bringing  up 
scholars  from  our  northern  district  entered  our  heads. 
We  reaHzed  at  length,  however,  that  we  should  close 
one  channel  of  criticism  to  the  enemy  if  we  proved  that 
we  could  justify  our  school  by  their  standard  of  annual 
examinations.  Our  teachers,  being  mostly  volunteers, 
had  to  come  from  outside  the  Colony.  Having  no  funds 
to  purchase  books  and  other  supplies,  we  made  use  of 
books  also  sent  us  from  outside.  The  real  value  of  the 
local  examination  becomes  questionable  as  a  standard 
of  success  when  far  more  highly  educated  teachers,  and 
at  least  as  cleverly  laid-out  study  books,  prevented  the 
children  in  our  school  from  passing  them. 

Moreover,  further  to  waken  their  faculties,  we  had 
included  in  our  facilities  a  large  upper  hall  of  the  school 
building  and  a  library  of  some  thousands  of  books  col- 
lected from  all  quarters.  The  former  afforded  the  stimu- 


260  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

lus  which  entertainments  given  by  the  children  could 
carry,  and  also  space  for  physical  drill;  the  latter,  that 
greatest  incentive  of  all,  access  to  books  which  lure  peo- 
ple to  wish  to  read  them.  In  summer  the  parents  and 
older  children  are  busy  with  the  fisheries  day  and  night, 
and  the  little  children  run  more  or  less  wild,  so  this  form 
of  occupation  was  doubly  desirable. 

The  generous  help  of  summer  volunteers,  especially 
a  trained  kindergartner.  Miss  Olive  Lesley,  gave  us  a 
regular  summer  school.  All  the  expensive  outfit  needed 
was  also  donated.  Eye  and  hand  were  enlisted  in  the 
service  of  brain  evolution;  while  a  piano,  which  it  is 
true  had  seen  better  days,  pressed  the  ear  and  the  im- 
agination into  the  service  as  well. 

One  of  the  great  gaps  in  child  development  in  Labrador 
had  been  the  almost  entire  lack  of  games.  The  very  first 
year  of  our  coming  the  absence  of  dolls  had  so  impressed 
itself  upon  us  that  the  second  season  we  had  brought  out 
a  trunkful.  Even  then  we  found  later  that  the  dolls  were 
perched  high  up  on  the  walls  as  ornaments,  just  out  of 
reach  of  the  children.  In  one  little  house  I  found  a  lad 
playing  with  some  marbles.  For  lack  of  better  these  were 
three-quarter-inch  bullets  which  "Dad  had  given  him," 
while  the  alley  was  a  full-inch  round  ball,  which  belonged 
to  what  my  host  was  pleased  to  call  "  the  little  darlint "  — 
a  hoary  blunderbuss  over  six  feet  in  length.  The  skipp'er 
informed  me  that  he  had  plenty  of  "fresh "  for  the  winter, 
largely  as  a  result  of  the  successful  efforts  of  the  "  darlint " ; 
though  it  appeared  to  have  exploded  with  the  same  fatal 
effect  this  year  as  the  season  previous.  "I  hear  that  you 
made  a  good  shot  the  other  day.  Uncle  Joe,"  I  remarked. 
"Nothing  to  speak  on,"  he  answered.  "I  only  got  forty- 
three,  though  I  think  there  was  a  few  more  if  I  could  h§ve 
found  them  on  the  ice." 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  261 

The  pathos  of  the  lack  of  toys  and  games  appealed 
especially  to  the  Anglo-Saxon,  who  believes  that  if  he 
has  any  advantage  over  competitors,  it  is  not  merely  in 
racial  attributes,  but  in  the  reaction  of  those  attributes 
which  develop  in  him  the  ineradicable  love  of  athletics 
and  sport.  The  fact  that  he  dubs  the  classmate  whom  he 
admires  most  "a  good  sport,"  shows  that  he  thinks  so, 
anyway. 

So  organized  play  was  carefully  introduced  on  the 
coast.  It  caught  like  wildfire  among  the  children,  and  it 
was  delightful  to  see  groups  of  them  naively  memorizing 
by  the  roadside  school  lessons  in  the  form  of  "Ring-of- 
Roses,"  "Looby-Loo,"  "All  on  the  Train  for  Boston." 
To  our  dismay  in  the  minds  of  the  local  people  the  very 
success  of  this  effort  gave  further  evidence  of  our  in- 
competence. 

Our  people  have  well-defined,  though  oftel^  singular, 
ideas  as  to  what  Almighty  God  does  and  does  not  allow; 
and  among  the  pursuits  which  are  irrevocably  con- 
demned by  local  oracles  is  dancing.  The  laxity  of  "for- 
eigners" on  this  article  of  the  Creed  is  proverbial.  At  the 
time  there  were  two  ministers  in  the  place,  and  realizing 
that  the  people  considered  that  our  kindergarten  was 
introducing  the  thin  edge  of  the  wedge,  and  that  our 
whole  effort  might  meet  with  disaster  unless  the  rumours 
were  checked,  I  went  in  search  of  them  without  delay. 
Three  o'clock  found  us  knocking  at  the  kindergarten 
door.  The  teacher  and  source  of  the  reputed  scandal 
seemed  in  no  way  disconcerted  by  the  visitation.  The 
first  game  was  irreproachable  —  every  child  was  sitting 
on  the  floor.  But  next  the  children  were  choosing  partners, 
and  though  the  boys  had  chosen  boys,  and  the  girls 
girls,  the  suspicions  of  the  vigilance  committee  were 
aroused.  No  danger,  however,  to  the  three  R's  trans- 


262  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

pired,  and  we  were  next  successfully  piloted  clear  of 
condemnation  through  a  game  entitled  "  Piggie-wig  and 
Piggie-wee."  Our  circulation  was  just  beginning  to  oper- 
ate once  more  in  its  normal  fashion  when  we  were  told 
that  the  whole  company  would  now  "join  hands  and 
move  around  in  a  circle"  to  music.  The  entire  jury 
sensed  that  the  crucial  moment  had  come.  We  saw  boys 
and  girls  alternating,  hand  held  in  hand  —  and  all  to  the 
undeniably  secular  libretto  of  "Looby-Loo."  It  was, 
moreover,  noted  with  inward  pain  that  many  of  the 
little  feet  actually  left  the  ground.  We  adjourned  to  an 
adjacent  fish  stage  to  discuss  the  matter.  I  need  not 
dilate  on  the  vicissitudes  of  the  session.  It  was  clear 
that  all  but  "Looby-Loo"  could  obviously  be  excluded 
from  the  group  of  "  questionables  "  — but  the  last  game 
was  of  a  different  calibre  and  must  be  put  to  vote. 
My  readers  will  be  relieved  to  learn  that  the  resultant 
ballot  was  unanimously  in  favour  of  non-interference, 
and  that  from  the  pulpit  the  following  Sunday  the 
clergy  gave  to  the  kindergarten  the  official  sanction  of 
the  Church. 

Other  outsiders  now  began  telling  the  people  that 
we  could  not  pass  the  Colony's  examinations  because  we 
wasted  our  efforts  on  teaching  "foolishness";  and  the 
denomination  which  had  hitherto  lent  us  aid  withdrew 
it,  and  tried  again  to  run  a  midget  sectarian  school  right 
alongside.  The  first  occasion,  however,  on  which  this 
institution  came  seriously  to  my  attention  was  when  the 
minister  and  another  young  man  came  to  call  during  the 
early  weeks  of  our  winter  school  session.  The  stranger 
was  their  special  teacher.  He  was  undoubtedly  a  smart 
lad;  he  had  passed  the  preliminary  examination.  But  he 
was  only  sixteen,  and  in  temperament  a  very  young  six- 
teen at  that.  He  was  engaged  at  a  more  generous  salary 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  263 

than  usual,  and  was  perfectly  prepared  to  revolutionize 
our  records.  But,  alas,  not  only  was  their  little  building 
practically  unfit  for  habitation,  but  after  a  week's  wait- 
ing not  one  single  scholar  had  come  to  his  school.  The 
contrast  between  the  two  opportunities  was  too  great  — 
except  for  frothing  criticism.  Gladly,  to  help  our  neigh- 
bours out  of  a  diflSculty,  we  divided  a  big  classroom  into 
two  parts,  added  a  third  teacher  to  our  school,  and  were 
thus  able  to  make  an  intermediate  grade. 

The  great  majority  of  the  whole  reconstruction  and 
work  of  the  school  was  made  possible  by  the  generous 
and  loving  interest  of  a  lady  in  Chicago.  Added  to  the 
other  anxieties  of  meeting  our  annual  budget,  we  did 
not  feel  able  to  bear  the  additional  burden  for  which 
this  venture  called.  One  cannot  work  at  one's  best  at 
any  time  with  an  anxious  mind.  The  lady,  however,  was 
generous  enough  to  give  suflScient  endowment  to  secure 
two  teachers  among  other  things,  though  she  absolutely 
refused  to  let  even  her  name  be  known  in  connection 
with  the  school.  Our  consolation  is  that  we  know  that 
she  has  vision  enough  to  realize  the  value  of  her  gift  and 
to  accept  that  as  a  more  than  suflScient  return. 

Seeing  that  some  of  our  older  scholars  were  able  to 
find  really  useful  and  remunerative  employment  in 
teaching,  and  as  only  for  those  who  held  certificates  of 
having  passed  the  local  examinations  were  augmentation 
grants  available,  we  decided  to  make  special  efforts  to 
have  our  scholars  pass  by  the  local  standards.  We,  there- 
fore, thanks  to  the  endowment,  engaged  teachers  trained 
in  the  country,  and  instituted  the  curriculum  of  the 
Colony.  These  teachers  told  us  that  our  school  was  better 
than  almost  any  outside  St.  John's.  Four  scholars  have 
passed  this  year;  and  now  we  have  as  head  mistress  a 
delightful  lady  who  holds  the  best  percentage  record  for 


264  A  LABKADOR  DOCTOR 

passing  children  through  the  requirements  of  the  local 
examinations  of  any  in  the  country. 

So  much  more  deeply,  however,  do  idle  words  sink 
into  some  natures  than  even  deeds,  that  one  family  pre- 
ferred to  keep  their  children  at  home  to  risk  sending 
them  to  our  undenominational  school;  and  there  is  no 
law  to  compel  better  wisdom  with  us  here  in  the  North. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  had  already  obtained  a  scale  of 
our  own  for  grading  success.  For  a  number  of  our  most 
promising  boys  and  girls  we  had  raised  the  money  for 
them  to  get  outside  the  country  what  they  could  never 
get  in  it,  namely,  the  technical  training  which  is  so  much 
needed  on  a  coast  where  we  have  to  do  everything  for 
ourselves,  and  the  breadth  of  view  which  contact  with  a 
more  progressive  civilization  alone  can  give  them.  The 
faculty  of  Pratt  Institute  gave  us  a  scholarship,  and  later 
two  of  them;  and  with  no  little  fear  as  to  their  ability  to 
keep  up,  we  sent  two  young  men  there.  The  newness  of 
our  school  forced  us  to  select  at  the  beginning  boys  who 
had  only  received  teaching  after  their  working  hours. 
Both  boys  and  girls  have  always  had  to  earn  something 
to  help  them  on  their  way  through.  But  they  have  stood 
the  test  of  efficiency  so  well  that  we  look  forward  with 
conjfidence  to  the  future.  A  girl  who  took  the  Domestic 
Economy  course  at  the  Nasson  Institute  told  me  only 
to-day,  "It  gave  me  a  new  life  altogether,  Doctor";  and 
she  is  making  a  splendid  return  in  service  to  her  own 
people  here. 

The  real  test  of  education  is  its  communal  effect;  and 
no  education  is  complete  which  leaves  the  individual 
ignorant  of  the  things  that  concern  his  larger  relation- 
ship to  his  country,  any  more  than  he  is  anything  beyond 
a  learned  animal  if  he  knows  nothing  of  his  opportunities 
and  responsibilities  as  a  son  of  God.  But  though  example 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  ^65 

is  a  more  impelling  factor  than  precept,  undoubtedly  the 
most  permanent  contributions  conferred  on  the  coast  by 
the  many  college  students,  who  come  as  volunteers  every 
summer  to  help  us  in  the  various  branches  of  our 
work,  is  just  this  gift  of  their  own  personalities.  Strangely 
enough,  quite  a  number  of  these  helpers  who  have  to 
spend  considerable  money  coming  and  returning,  just  to 
give  us  what  they  can  for  the  sole  return  of  what  that 
means  to  their  own  lives,  have  not  been  the  sons  of  the 
wealthy,  but  those  working  their  way  through  the  col- 
leges. These  men  are  just  splendid  to  hold  up  as  inspira- 
tional to  our  own. 

The  access  to  books,  as  well  as  to  sermons,  may  not 
be  neglected.  Our  faculties,  like  our  jaws,  atrophy  if  we 
do  not  use  them  to  bite  with.  The  Carnegie  libraries 
have  emphasized  a  fact  that  is  to  education  and  the 
colleges  what  social  work  is  to  medicine  and  the  hos- 
pitals. We  were  running  south  some  years  ago  on  our 
long  northern  trip  before  a  fine  leading  wind,  when  sud- 
denly we  noticed  a  small  boat  with  an  improvised  flag 
hoisted,  standing  right  out  across  our  bows.  Thinking 
that  it  was  at  least  some  serious  surgical  case,  we  at  once 
ordered  "Down  sail  and  heave  her  to,"  annoying  though 
it  was  to  have  the  trouble  and  delay.  When  at  last  she 
was  alongside,  a  solitary,  white-haired  old  man  climbed 
with  much  difficulty  over  our  rail.  "Good-day.  What's 
the  trouble?  We  are  in  a  hurry."  The  old  man  most 
courteously  doffed  his  cap,  and  stood  holding  it  in  his 
hand.  "I  wanted  to  ask  you.  Doctor,"  he  said  slowly,  "if 
you  had  any  books  which  you  could  lend  me.  We  can't 
get  anything  to  read  here."  An  angry  reply  almost  es- 
caped my  lips  for  delaying  a  steamer  for  such  a  pur- 
pose. But  a  strange  feeling  of  humiliation  replaced  it 
almost  immediately.  Which  is  really  charity  —  skilfully 


^6Q  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

to  remove  his  injured  leg,  if  he  had  one,  or  to  afford  him 
the  pleasure  and  profit  of  a  good  book?  Both  services 
were  just  as  far  from  his  reach  without  our  help. 

"Haven't  you  got  any  books?" 

"Yes,  Doctor,  I've  got  two,  but  I've  read  them 
through  and  through  long  ago." 

"What  kind  are  they?" 

"One  is  the  *  Works  of  Josephus,'"  he  answered,  "and 
the  other  is  'Plutarch's  Lives.'" 

I  thought  that  I  had  discovered  the  first  man  who 
could  honestly  and  truthfully  say  that  he  would  prefer 
for  his  own  library  the  "best  hundred  books,"  selected 
by  Mr.  Ruskin  and  Dr.  Eliot,  without  even  so  much  as 
a  sigh  for  the  "ten  best  sellers." 

He  was  soon  bounding  away  over  the  seas  in  his  little 
craft,  the  happy  possessor  of  one  of  our  moving  libra- 
ries, containing  some  fifty  books,  ranging  from  Henty's 
stories  to  discarded  tomes  from  theological  libraries. 

Each  year  the  hospital  ship  moves  these  library 
boxes  one  more  stage  along  the  coast.  As  there  are  some 
seventy-five  of  them,  they  thus  last  the  natural  fife  of 
books,  since  we  have  only  rarely  enjoyed  the  help  of  a 
trained  librarian  enabling  us  to  make  the  most  use  of 
these  always  welcome  assets  for  our  work.  Later,  some 
librarian  friends  from  Brooklyn,  chief  among  whom  was 
Miss  Marion  Cutter,  came  down  to  help  us;  but  our  in- 
ability to  have  continuity  when  the  ladies  cannot  afford 
to  give  their  valuable  services,  has  seriously  handicapped 
the  eflSciency  of  this  branch  of  the  work.  This,  however, 
only  spells  opportunity,  and  when  this  war  releases  the 
new  appreciation  of  service,  we  feel  confident  that  some- 
how we  shall  be  able  to  fill  the  gap,  and  some  one  will  be 
found  to  come  and  help  us  again  to  meet  this  great  need. 

The  cooperation  of  teachers  and  librarians  more  than 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  267 

doubles  the  capacity  of  each  alone,  and  we  believe  sin- 
cerely that  they  do  that  of  doctors,  as  they  unquestion- 
ably do  that  of  the  clergy.  All  the  world's  workers  have 
infinitely  more  to  gain  by  cooperation  than  they  often 
suspect.  And  indeed  we  who  are  apostles  of  cooperation, 
as  essential  for  economy  in  distribution  and  eflBciency 
in  production,  realize  that  groups  of  workers  pulling 
together  always  increase  by  geometrical  progression  the 
result  obtained. 

None  of  our  methods,  however,  tackled  the  smallest 
settlements,  hidden  away  here  and  there  in  these  fjords, 
especially  those  unreached  by  the  mail  steamers  and 
devoid  of  means  of  transportation.  Mahomet  just  could 
not  come  to  the  mountain,  so  it  had  to  go  to  him.  A  lady 
and  a  Doctor  of  Philosophy,  Miss  Ethel  Gordon  Muir, 
whose  life  had  been  spent  in  teaching,  and  who  would 
have  been  excused  for  discontinuing  that  function  dur- 
ing her  long  vacations,  came  down  at  her  own  cost  and 
charges  to  carry  the  light  to  one  of  these  lonely  settle- 
ments. She  has  with  loyal  devotion  continued  to  carry 
on  and  enlarge  that  work  ever  since,  till  finally  she  has 
built  up  a  work  that  the  clergyman  of  the  main  section 
of  coast  affected,  and  also  the  Superintendent  of  Edu- 
cation, have  declared  is  the  most  effective  branch  of  our 
Mission.  Her  band  of  teachers  are  volunteers.  They 
come  down  to  these  little  hamlets  for  the  duration  of 
their  summer  vacations.  They  live  with  the  fishermen 
in  their  cottages  and  gather  their  pupils  daily  wherever 
seems  best.  Lack  of  proper  accommodation  and  pioneer 
conditions  throughout  in  no  way  deter  them.  We  ex- 
pected that  their  criticism  would  be,  "It  is  not  worth 
while."  That  has  never  been  the  case.  Before  the  war 
they  came  again  and  again,  as  a  testimony  to  their  belief 
in  the  value  of  the  effort.  Some  have  given  promising 


268  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

children  a  chance  for  a  complete  education  in  the  States. 
Indeed,  one  such  lad,  taken  down  some  years  ago  by 
one  of  the  students,  entered  Amherst  College  last  year; 
while  several  were  fighting  with  the  American  boys 
"Over  There." 

The  only  real  joy  of  possession  is  the  power  which 
it  confers  for  a  larger  life  of  service.  Has  it  been  the 
reader's  good  fortune  ever  to  save  a  human  life?  A  cousin 
of  mine,  an  officer  in  the  submarine  service  of  the  Royal 
Engineers,  told  me  a  year  or  two  before  the  war  that  he 
was  never  quite  happy  because  he  had  spent  all  his  life 
acquiring  special  capacities  which  he  never  in  the  least 
expected  to  be  able  to  put  to  practical  use.  This  war  has 
given  to  him,  at  least,  what  possessions  could  never  have 
offered. 

It  almost  requires  the  fabulous  Jack  to  overcome  the 
hoary  giants  of  prejudice  and  custom,  or  the  irrepressible 
energy  of  the  Gorgon.  It  has  been  helpful  to  remember 
away  "down  North"  the  stand  which  Archbishop 
Ireland  took  for  public  schools.  When  the  Episcopal 
clergyman  for  Labrador,  whom  we  had  been  influential 
in  bringing  out  from  England,  decided  to  start  an  un- 
denominational boarding-school  on  his  section  of  the 
coast,  we  began  to  hope  that  we  might  yet  live  to  see 
our  sporadic  effort  become  a  policy.  Laymen  in  St. 
John's,  led  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Edgar  Jones,  a  most  pro- 
gressive clergyman,  sympathized  in  dollars,  and  we 
were  able  to  back  the  effort.  A  splendid  volunteer  head 
teacher  will  arrive  in  the  spring  to  begin  work.  The  ef- 
fort still  needs  much  help;  but  I  am  persuaded  that  a 
chain  of  undenominational  schools  can  be  started  that 
will  react  on  the  whole  country.  Already  a  scheme  for 
a  similar  uplift  for  the  west  coast  is  being  promulgated. 

In  a  letter  written  to  my  wife  some  years  ago  I  find 


PROBLEMS  OF  EDUCATION  269 

that  my  convictions  on  the  subject  of  education  were  no 
less  firm  than  they  are  to-day.  One  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  "ignorance  is  the  worst  cause  of  suffering  on 
our  coast,  and  our  'religion'  is  fostering  it.  True,  it  has 
denominational  schools,  but  these  are  to  bolster  up 
special  ecclesiastical  bodies,  and  are  not  half  so  good  as 
Government  schools  would  be.  The  'goods  delivered'  in 
the  schools  are  not  educational  in  the  best  sense,  and 
are  all  too  often  ineflficiently  offered.  Instead  of  making 
the  children  ambitious  to  go  on  learning  through  life, 
they  make  them  tired.  There  is  no  effort  to  stimulate  the 
play  side;  and  in  our  north  end  of  the  Colony's  territory 
there  are  no  trades  taught,  no  new  ideas,  no  manual 
training  —  it  is  all  so-called  'arts'  and  Creeds." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

"WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?" 

We  are  somewhat  superstitious  down  here  still,  and  not 
a  few  believe  that  shoals  and  submerged  rocks  are  like 
sirens  which  charm  vessels  to  their  doom. 

On  one  occasion,  as  late  in  the  fall  we  were  creeping 
up  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle  in  the  only  motor  boat  then 
in  use  there,  our  new  toy  broke  down,  and  with  a  strong 
onshore  wind  we  gradually  drifted  in  toward  the  high 
cliffs.  It  was  a  heavy  boat,  and  though  we  rowed  our 
best  we  realized  that  we  must  soon  be  on  the  rocks, 
where  a  strong  surf  was  breaking.  So  we  lashed  all  our 
lines  together  and  cast  over  our  anchors,  hoping  to  find 
bottom.  Alas,  the  water  was  too  deep.  Darkness  came 
on  and  the  prospect  of  a  long,  weary  night  struggling 
for  safety  made  us  thrill  with  excitement.  Suddenly  a 
schooner's  lights,  utterly  unexpected,  loomed  up,  coming 
head  on  toward  us.  Like  Saul  and  his  asses,  we  no  longer 
cared  about  our  craft  so  long  as  we  escaped.  At  once  we 
lashed  the  hurricane  light  on  the  boat-hook  and  waved 
it  to  and  fro  on  high  to  make  sure  of  attracting  attention. 
To  our  dismay  the  schooner,  now  almost  in  hail,  in- 
continently tacked,  and,  making  for  the  open  sea,  soon 
left  us  far  astern.  We  fired  our  guns,  we  shouted  in 
unison,  we  lit  flares.  All  to  no  purpose.  Surely  it  must 
have  been  a  phantom  vessel  sent  to  mock  us.  Suddenly 
our  amateur  engineer,  who  had  all  the  time  been  working 
away  at  the  scrap-heap  of  parts  into  which  he  had  dis- 
membered the  motor,  got  a  faint  kick  out  of  one  cylinder 
—  a  second  —  a  third,  then  two,  three,  and  then  a  sol- 
itary one  again.  It  was  exactly  like  a  case  of  blocked 


WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?        271 

heart.  But  it  was  enough  with  our  oars  to  make  us  move 
slowly  ahead.  By  much  stimulating  and  watchful  nurs- 
ing we  limped  along  on  the  one  cylinder,  and  about  mid- 
night found  ourselves  alongside  the  phantom  ship, 
which  we  had  followed  into  the  harbour  "afar  off." 
Angry  enough  at  their  desertion  of  us  in  distress,  we 
went  aboard  just  to  tell  them  what  we  thought  of  their 
behaviour.  But  their  explanation  entirely  disarmed  us. 
"Them  cliffs  is  haunted,"  said  the  skipper.  "More'n  one 
light  's  been  seen  there  than  ever  any  man  lit.  When  us 
saw  you'se  light  flashing  round  right  in  on  the  cliffs,  us 
knowed  it  was  no  place  for  Christian  men  that  time  o' 
night.  Us  guessed  it  was  just  fairies  or  devils  trying  to 
toll  us  in." 

We  had  no  lighthouses  on  Labrador  in  those  days,  and 
though  hundreds  of  vessels,  crowded  often  with  women 
and  children,  had  to  pass  up  and  down  the  coast  each 
spring  and  fall,  still  not  a  single  island,  harbour,  cape,  or 
reef  had  any  light  to  mark  it,  and  many  boats  were  un- 
necessarily lost  as  a  result. 

Most  of  the  schooners  of  this  large  fleet  are  small. 
Many  are  old  and  poorly  "found"  in  running  gear.  Their 
decks  are  so  crowded  with  boats,  barrels,  gear,  wood,  and 
other  impedimenta,  that  to  reef  or  handle  sails  on  a  dark 
night  is  almost  impossible;  while  below  they  were  often 
so  crowded  with  women  and  children  going  North  with 
their  men  for  the  summer  fishing  on  the  Labrador  shore, 
that  I  have  had  to  crawl  on  my  knees  to  get  at  a  patient, 
after  climbing  down  through  the  main  hatch.  These  craft 
are  quite  unfitted  for  a  rough  night  at  sea,  especially 
as  there  always  are  icebergs  or  big  pans  about,  which  if 
touched  would  each  spell  another  "vessel  missing."  So 
the  craft  all  creep  North  and  South  in  the  spring  and  fall 
along  the  land,  darting  into  harbours  before  dark,  and 


272  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

leaving  before  dawn  if  the  night  proves  "civil."  Yet 
many  a  time  I  have  seen  these  little  vessels  with  their 
precious  cargoes  becalmed,  or  with  wind  ahead,  just 
unable  to  make  anchorage,  and  often  on  moonless  nights 
when  the  barometer  has  been  low  and  the  sky  threaten- 
ing. As  there  were  no  lights  on  the  land,  it  would  have 
been  madness  to  try  and  make  harbours  after  sundown. 

I  have  known  the  cruel,  long  anxiety  of  heart  which 
the  dilemma  involved.  It  has  been  our  great  pleasure 
sometimes  to  run  out  and  tow  vessels  in  out  of  their  dis- 
tress. I  can  still  feel  the  grip  of  one  fine  skipper,  who 
came  aboard  when  the  sea  eased  down.  The  only  harbour 
available  for  us  had  been  very  small,  and  the  water  too 
deep  for  his  poor  gear.  So  when  he  started  to  drift,  we 
had  given  him  a  line  and  let  him  hold  on  to  us  through 
the  night,  with  his  own  stern  only  a  few  yards  from  the 
cliffs  under  his  lee,  and  all  his  loved  ones,  as  well  as  his 
freighters,  a  good  deal  nearer  heaven  than  he  wished 
them  to  be. 

We  had  frequently  written  to  the  Government  of  this 
neglect  of  lights  for  the  coast.  But  Labrador  has  no 
representative  in  the  Newfoundland  Parliament,  and 
legislators  who  never  visited  Labrador  had  unimagina- 
tive minds.  Year  after  year  went  by  and  nothing  was 
done.  So  I  spoke  to  many  friends  of  the  dire  need  for  a 
light  near  Battle  Harbour  Hospital.  Practically  every 
one  of  the  Northern  craft  ran  right  by  us  many  times  as 
they  fished  first  in  the  Gulf  and  later  on  the  east  coast, 
and  so  had  to  go  past  that  corner  of  land.  I  have  seen  a 
hundred  vessels  come  and  anchor  near  by  in  a  single 
evening.  When  the  money  was  donated,  our  architect 
designed  the  building,  and  a  friend  promised  to  endow 
the  effort,  so  that  the  salary  of  the  light-keeper  might  be 
permanent.  The  material  was  cut  and  sent  North,  when 


Hy 


VV 


J/- 1., 


,  *.  I,  \ 


\ 


WHO  HATH  DESmED  THE  SEA?        273 

we  were  politely  told  that  the  Government  could  not 
permit  private  ownership  of  lights  —  a  very  proper  de- 
cision, too.  They  told  us  that  the  year  before  money  had 
been  voted  by  the  House  for  lights,  and  the  first  would 
be  erected  near  Battle  Harbour.  This  was  done,  and  the 
Double  Island  Light  has  been  a  veritable  Godsend  to  me 
as  well  as  to  thousands  of  others  many  times  since  that 
day. 

One  hundred  miles  north  of  Indian  Tickle,  a  place  also 
directly  in  the  run  of  all  the  fishing  schooners,  a  light 
was  much  needed.  On  a  certain  voyage  coming  South 
with  the  fleet  in  the  fall,  we  had  all  tried  to  make  the 
harbour,  but  it  shut  down  suddenly  before  nightfall 
with  a  blanket  of  fog  which  you  could  almost  cut  with 
a  knife,  and  being  inside  many  reefs,  and  unable  to  make 
the  open,  we  were  all  forced  to  anchor.  Where  we  were 
exactly  none  of  us  knew,  for  we  had  all  pushed  on  for  the 
harbour  as  much  as  we  dared.  There  were  eleven  riding- 
lights  visible  around  us  when  a  rift  came  in  the  fog.  We 
hoped  against  hope  that  we  had  made  the  harbour.  A 
fierce  northeaster  gathered  strength  as  night  fell,  and  a 
mighty  sea  began  to  heave  in.  Soon  we  strained  at  our 
anchors  in  the  big  seas,  and  heavy  water  swept  down 
our  decks  from  bow  to  stern.  Our  patients  were  dressed 
and  our  boats  gotten  ready,  though  it  all  had  only  a 
psychological  value.  Gradually  we  missed  first  one  and 
then  another  of  the  riding-lights,  and  it  was  not  difficult 
to  guess  what  had  happened.  When  daylight  broke,  only 
one  boat  was  left  —  a  large  vessel  called  the  Yosemite, 
and  she  was  drifting  right  down  toward  us.  Suddenly  she 
touched  a  reef,  turned  on  her  side,  and  we  saw  the  seas 
carry  her  over  the  breakers,  the  crew  hanging  on  to  her 
bilge.  Steaming  to  our  anchors  had  saved  us.  All  the 
vessels  that  went  ashore  became  matchwood.  But  before 


274  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

we  could  get  our  anchors  or  slip  them,  our  main  steam 
pipe  gave  out  and  we  had  to  blow  down  our  boilers.  It 
was  now  a  race  between  the  engineers  trying  to  repair 
the  damage  and  the  shortening  hours  of  daylight.  On 
the  result  depended  quite  possibly  the  lives  of  us  all.  I 
cannot  remember  one  sweeter  sound  than  the  raucous 
voice  of  the  engineer  just  in  the  nick  of  time  calling  out, 
"Right  for'ard,"  and  then  the  signal  of  the  engine-room 
bell  in  the  tell-tale  in  our  little  wheel-house.  The  Govern- 
ment has  since  put  a  fine  little  light  in  summer  on  White 
Point,  the  point  off  which  we  lay. 

Farther  north,  right  by  our  hospital  at  Indian  Har- 
bour, is  a  narrow  tickle  known  as  the  "White  Cockade.'* 
Through  this  most  of  the  fleet  pass,  and  here  also  we  had 
planned  for  a  lighthouse.  When  we  were  forbidden  to  put 
our  material  at  Battle  Harbour,  we  suggested  moving  to 
this  almost  equally  important  point.  But  it  fell  under  the 
same  category,  and  soon  after  the  Government  put  a 
good  light  there  also.  The  fishermen,  therefore,  suggested 
that  we  should  offer  our  peripatetic,  would-be  lighthouse 
to  the  Government  for  some  new  place  each  year. 

We  have  not  much  now  to  complain  of  so  far  as  the 
needs  of  our  present  stage  of  evolution  goes.  We  have 
wireless  stations,  quite  a  number  of  lights,  not  a  few 
landmarks,  and  a  ten  times  better  mail  and  transport 
service  than  the  much  wealthier  and  more  able  Do- 
minion of  Canada  could  and  ought  to  give  to  her  long 
shore  from  Quebec  to  the  eastern  "Newfoundland" 
boundary  on  the  Straits  Labrador. 

He  is  not  a  great  legislator  who  only  makes  provision 
for  certainties.  True,  the  West  has  shown  such  riches  and 
capacity  that  it  has  paid  better  to  develop  it  first.  But 
there  is  no  excuse  now  whatever  for  neglecting  the  East. 
The  Dominion  would  have  been  well  advised,  indeed, 


WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?        275 

had  she  years  ago  built  a  railway  to  the  east  coast,  short- 
ening the  steamer  communication  with  England  to  only 
two  nights  at  sea,  and  saving  twenty-four  hours  for  the 
mails  between  London  and  Toronto.  The  war  has  shown 
how  easily  she  could  have  afforded  it.  Most  ardently  I 
had  hoped  that  she  might  have  turned  some  of  her  Ger- 
man prisoner  labour  in  so  invaluable  a  direction. 

Had  the  reindeer  installation  been  handled  by  the 
Newfoundland  Government  years  ago  as  it  should  have 
been,  Labrador  would  have  yielded  to  our  boys  in  France 
a  very  material  assistance  in  meat  and  furs.  Canada  now 
could  and  should,  if  only  in  the  interest  of  her  native 
population,  begin  on  this  problem  as  soon  as  peace  is 
declared. 

The  fact  that  a  thing  possesses  vitality  is  a  guarantee 
that  it  will  grow  if  it  can.  Each  nev/  focus  will  expand, 
and  caterpillar-like  cast  off  its  old  clothing  for  better. 
The  first  necessity  for  economy  and  eflSciency  in  our 
work  has  been  to  get  our  patients  quickly  to  us  or  to  be 
able  to  get  to  them.  Experience  has  shown  us  that  while 
boats  entirely  dependent  on  motors  are  cheapest,  it  is 
not  always  safe  to  do  open-sea  work  in  such  launches 
without  a  secondary  and  more  reliable  means  of  pro- 
gression. The  stories  of  a  doctor's  work  in  these  launches 
would  fill  a  volume  by  themselves.  The  first  Northern 
Messenger,  a  small  "hot-head"  boat,  was  replaced  and 
sold  to  pay  part  of  the  cost  of  Northern  Messenger  num- 
ber two.  This  in  its  turn  was  wrecked  on  an  uncharted 
shoal  with  Dr.  West  on  board,  and  her  insurance  used 
to  help  to  procure  Northern  Messenger  number  three  — 
which  is  the  beautiful  boat  which  now  serves  Harrington, 
our  most  westerly  hospital.  We  are  largely  indebted  for 
her  to  Mr.  William  Bowditch,  of  Milton,  Massachusetts. 

Dr.  Hare,  our  first  doctor  at  that  station,  never  wrote 


276  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

his  own  experiences,  but  one  of  the  Yale  volunteers  who 
worked  under  him  wrote  a  story  founded  on  fact,  from 
which  the  following  incident  is  suggestive. 

Once,  running  home  before  a  wind  in  the  Gulf,  the 
doctor  suddenly  missed  his  little  son  Pat,  and  looking 
round  saw  him  struggling  in  the  water,  already  many 
yards  astern.  Dr.  Hare,  who  was  at  the  tiller  at  the  time, 
instantly  jumped  over  after  him.  The  child  was  finally 
disappearing  when  he  reached  him  at  last  and  held  his 
head  above  water.  Meanwhile  the  engineer,  who  had 
been  below,  jumped  on  deck  to  find  the  sails  flapping  in 
the  wind  and  the  boat  head  to  sea.  With  the  intuitive 
quickness  of  our  people  in  matters  pertaining  to  the  sea, 
he  took  in  the  situation  in  a  second,  and  though  entirely 
alone  manoeuvred  the  boat  so  cleverly  as  to  pick  them 
both  up  before  they  perished  in  these  frigid  waters. 
Pat's  young  life  was  saved,  only  to  be  given  a  short  few 
years  later  in  France  for  the  same  fight  for  the  kingdom 
of  righteousness  which  his  home  life  had  made  his  familiar 
ideal. 

The  forty-five-foot,  "hot-head"  yawl  Daryl,  given  us 
by  the  Dutch  Reformed  friends  in  New  York,  was  sold 
to  the  Hudson  Bay  Company.  At  first  she  was  naturally 
called  the  Flying  Dutchman,  and  was  most  useful;  but 
here  we  have  learned  when  a  better  instrument  is  avail- 
able that  it  is  the  truest  economy  to  scrap-heap  the  old. 
We  were  to  give  delivery  of  the  boat  in  Baffin's  Land. 
There  were  plenty  of  volunteers  for  the  task,  for  the 
tough  jobs  are  the  very  ones  which  appeal  to  real  men. 
It  would  be  well  if  the  churches  realized  this  fact  and 
that  therein  lies  the  real  secret  of  Christianity.  The  im- 
pression that  being  a  Christian  is  a  soft  job  inevitably 
brings  our  religion  into  contempt.  I  had  been  in  England 
that  spring,  and  had  been  able  to  arrange  that  the  mail 


WHO  HATH  DESmED  THE  SEA?        277 

steamer  bound  for  Montreal  on  which  I  took  passage 
should  stop  and  drop  me  off  Belle  Isle  if  the  crusaders 
who  were  to  take  this  launch  on  her  long  voyage  North 
would  stand  out  across  our  pathway.  Mr.  Marconi  per- 
sonally took  an  interest  in  the  venture.  The  launch  was 
to  wait  at  our  most  easterly  Labrador  station,  and  we 
were  to  keep  telling  her  our  position.  The  boat  was  in 
charge  of  Mr.  John  Rowland  and  Mr.  Robert  English, 
both  of  Yale.  It  created  quite  a  furor  among  the  passen- 
gers on  our  great  ship,  when  she  stopped  in  mid-ocean, 
as  it  appeared  to  them,  and  lowered  an  erratic  doctor 
over  the  side  on  to  a  midget,  whose  mast-tops  one  looked 
down  upon  from  the  liner's  rail.  The  sensation  was  all 
the  more  marked  as  we  disappeared  over  the  rail  cling- 
ing to  two  large  pots  of  geraniums  —  an  importation 
which  we  regarded  as  very  much  worth  while. 

With  an  old  Hudson  Bay  man,  Mr.  George  Ford,  to 
act  as  interpreter,  and  a  Harvard  colleague,  who  to  his 
infinite  chagrin  was  recalled  by  a  wireless  from  his 
parents  almost  before  starting,  the  little  ship  and  her 
crew  of  three  disappeared  "  over  the  edge  "  beyond  com- 
munication. I  should  mention  that  the  Company  had 
promised  an  engineer  for  the  launch,  but  he  had  begged 
off  when  he  understood  the  nature  of  the  projected  ex- 
pedition; so  Yale  decided  that  they  were  men  enough  to 
do  without  any  outside  help. 

September  had  nearly  gone,  and  no  news  had  come 
from  the  boys.  I  owe  some  one  an  infinite  debt  for  a 
temperament  which  does  not  go  halfway  to  meet  troubles; 
but  even  I  was  a  little  worried  when  unkind  rumours  that 
we  had  sold  a  boat  that  was  not  safe  were  capped  by  a 
father's  letter  to  say  that  he  "had  heard  the  reports"! 
Fortunately,  two  days  later,  as  the  Strathcona  lay  taking 
on  whale  meat  for  winter  dog  food  at  the  northernmost 


278  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

factory,  the  Northern  mail  steamer  came  in.  On  board 
were  our  returned  wanderers,  and  papa,  who  had  gone 
down  as  far  as  the  Labrador  steamer  runs  to  look  for 
them,  as  proud  and  happy  as  a  man  has  a  right  to  be 
over  sons  who  do  things.  The  boys  had  not  only  reached 
BaflBn's  Land,  but  had  explored  over  a  hundred  miles  of 
its  uncharted  coast-line,  crossed  to  Cape  Wolstenholme, 
navigated  Stupart's  Bay  —  northeast  of  Ungava  —  and 
finally  returned  to  Baffin's  Land,  coming  back  to  Cart- 
wright  on  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's  steamer  Pelican. 
It  was  a  splendid  record,  especially  when  we  remember 
the  fierce  currents  and  tremendous  rise  and  fall  of  tides 
in  that  distant  land.  This  latter  was  so  great  that  having 
anchored  one  night  in  three  fathoms  of  water  in  what 
appeared  to  be  a  good  harbour,  they  had  awakened  in 
the  morning  to  the  fact  that  they  were  in  a  pond  a  full 
mile  in  the  country,  left  stranded  by  the  retiring  tide. 

Our  last  "hot-head,"  the  Pomiuk,  in  a  heavy  gale  of 
wind  was  smashed  to  atoms  on  a  terrible  reef  of  rocks  off 
Domino  Point  a  mile  from  land  —  fortunately  with  no 
one  aboard.  Yet  another  of  our  fine  yawls,  the  Andrew 
McCosh,  given  us  by  the  students  of  Princeton,  was 
driven  from  her  anchors  on  to  the  dangerous  Point  Amour, 
where  years  ago,  H.M.S.  Lily  was  lost,  and  whose  bones 
still  lie  bleaching  on  the  rocky  foreshore  at  the  foot  of 
the  cliffs.  Much  as  I  love  the  sea,  it  made  one  rather 
"sore"  that  it  should  serve  us  such  a  turn  as  wrecking 
the  McCosh.  I  have  been  on  the  sea  for  over  thirty 
years  and  never  lost  a  vessel  while  aboard  her,  but  to 
look  on  while  the  waves  destroyed  so  beautiful  a  handmaid 
almost  reconciled  me  to  the  statement  that  in  heaven 
there  shall  "be  no  more  sea." 

It  was  near  this  same  spot  that  in  November,  1905, 
a  very  old  vessel,  while  trying  to  cross  the  Straits  in  a 


WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?        279 

breeze,  suddenly  sprung  a  leak  which  sent  her  to  the 
bottom  in  spite  of  all  the  pumping  which  could  be  done. 
The  six  men  aboard  were  able  to  keep  afloat  at  that  time 
of  year  in  the  open  Atlantic  out  of  sight  of  land  for  five 
days  and  nights.  They  had  nothing  to  eat  but  dry  bread, 
and  no  covering  of  any  kind.  The  winds  were  heavy  and 
the  seas  high  all  the  while.  By  patiently  keeping  their 
little  boat's  head  to  the  wind  with  the  oars,  for  they  had 
not  any  sails,  day  after  day  and  night  after  night,  and 
backing  her  astern  when  a  breaker  threatened  to  over- 
whelm them,  they  eventually  reached  land  safe  and 
sound. 

The  special  interest  about  the  launches  has  always 
been  the  pleasant  connection  which  they  have  enabled 
us  to  maintain  with  the  universities.  Yale  crews.  Harvard 
crews,  Princeton  crews,  Johns  Hopkins  crews.  College  of 
Physicians  and  Surgeons  crews,  and  combined  crews  of 
many  others,  have  in  succeeding  years  thus  become  inter- 
ested. Occasionally  these  men  have  taken  back  some  of 
their  Labrador  shipmates  to  the  United  States  for  a 
year's  education,  and  in  that  and  other  ways,  so  they 
say,  have  they  themselves  received  much  real  joy  and 
inspiration. 

In  order  to  maintain  the  interest  which  Canada  had 
taken  in  our  work,  it  had  in  some  way  to  be  organized. 
We  had  volunteer  honorary  secretaries  in  a  few  cities, 
but  no  way  of  keeping  them  informed  of  our  needs  and 
our  progress.  In  New  England  a  most  loyal  friend,  Miss 
Emma  White,  who  ever  since  has  been  secretary  and 
devoted  helper  of  the  Labrador  work  there,  had  started 
a  regular  association  with  a  board  of  directors  and  had 
taken  an  office  in  Beacon  Street,  Boston.  This  associa- 
tion now  and  again  published  little  brochures  of  our 
work,  or  ordered  out  a  few  copies  of  the  English  mag- 


280  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

azine  called  "The  Toilers  of  the  Deep."  It  was  suggested 
that  we  might  with  advantage  publish  a  quarterly 
pamphlet  of  our  own.  This  was  made  possible  by  the 
generous  help  of  the  late  Miss  Julia  Greenshields,  of 
Toronto,  who  undertook  not  only  to  edit,  but  also  per- 
sonally to  finance  any  loss  on  a  little  magazine  to  be 
entitled  "Among  the  Deep-Sea  Fishers."  This  has  been 
maintained  ever  since,  and  has  been  responsible  for  help- 
ing to  raise  many  of  the  funds  to  enable  us  to  "carry  on." 

We  had  also  begun  to  get  friends  in  New  York.  Dr. 
Charles  Parkhurst,  famous  especially  for  his  plucky  ex- 
posure of  the  former  rottenness  of  the  police  force  of  that 
city,  had  asked  me  to  give  an  illustrated  lecture  at  his 
mission  in  the  Bowery.  After  my  talk  a  gentleman  present, 
to  my  blank  astonishment,  gave  me  a  cheque  for  five 
hundred  dollars.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  lifelong  friend- 
ship with  one  who  has,  for  all  the  succeeding  years, 
given  far  more  than  money,  namely,  the  constant  in- 
spiration of  his  own  attitude  to  life  and  his  wise  counsel 
—  to  say  nothing  of  the  value  of  the  endorsation  of  his 
name.  His  eldest  son,  one  of  the  ablest  of  the  rising  New 
York  architects,  became  chairman  of  the  Grenfell  Asso- 
ciation of  America,  and  gave  us  both  of  his  time  and 
talent  —  he  being  responsible,  as  voluntary  architect,  for 
many  of  our  present  buildings,  including  the  Institute  at 
St.  John's,  Newfoundland. 

This  spread  of  interest  in  the  United  States  greatly 
increased  our  correspondence,  with  an  odd  result.  Amer- 
icans apparently  all  believed  that  this  Colony  was  part 
of  Canada,  and  that  the  postage  was  two  cents  as  to  the 
Dominion.  This  mistake  left  us  six  cents  to  pay  on  every 
letter,  and  sixteen  on  any  which  were  overweight.  On 
one  occasion  the  postmaster  offered  me  so  many  taxable 
letters  that  I  decided  to  accept  only  one,  and  let  the 


WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?        281 

others  go  back.  That  one  contained  a  cheque  for  a  hun- 
dred dollars  for  the  Mission.  I  naturally  took  the  rest, 
and  found  every  one  of  them  to  be  bills,  gossip,  or  from 
autograph-hunters. 

On  inquiry,  our  Postmaster-General  informed  me  that 
it  was  not  possible  to  arrange  a  two-cent  postal  rate  with 
America.  It  had  been  tried  and  abandoned,  because 
Canada  wanted  a  share  for  carrying  the  letters  through 
her  territory.  He  told  me,  however,  that  he  would  agree 
gladly  if  the  United  States  offered  it.  On  my  visit  to 
Washington  I  had  the  honour  of  dining  with  Lord  Bryce, 
our  Ambassador  there  and  an  old  friend  of  my  father's, 
and  I  mentioned  the  matter  to  him.  He  could  not,  how- 
ever, commend  my  efforts  to  the  Government,  as  I  had 
no  credentials  as  a  special  delegate.  There  was  nothing 
to  do  but  take  my  place  in  the  queue  of  importunates 
waiting  to  interview  the  Postmaster-General.  When  at 
length  I  had  been  moved  to  the  top  of  the  bench,  I  was 
called  in,  and  very  soon  explained  my  mission.  I  received 
a  most  cordial  hearing,  but  merely  the  information  that 
a  note  would  be  made  of  my  request  and  filed. 

It  suddenly  flashed  upon  me  that  Americans  had  equal 
fishing  rights  with  ourselves  on  the  Labrador  coast,  and 
that  quite  a  number  visited  there  every  year.  Possibly 
the  grant  of  a  two-cent  postage  would  be  a  welcome 
little  "sop"  to  them.  Mr.  Meyer,  who  was  the  Post- 
master-General at  the  time,  said  that  it  made  all  the 
difference  if  the  reduced  rate  would  in  any  way  encour- 
age the  American  mercantile  marine.  He  bade  me  draw 
a  careful  list  of  reasons  in  favour  of  my  proposal,  and 
promised  to  give  it  careful  attention. 

It  so  happened  that  a  few  days  later  I  mentioned  the 
matter  to  Colonel  McCook  at  whose  home  I  was  staying 
in  New  York.  Colonel  McCook,  known  as  "Fighting 


282  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

McCook,"  from  the  fact  that  he  was  the  only  one  of 
nine  brothers  not  killed  in  the  Civil  War,  at  once  took 
up  the  cudgels  in  my  behalf,  left  for  Washington  the 
following  day,  and  wired  me  on  the  next  morning,  "All 
arranged.  Congratulations"  —  and  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  telegraphing  the  Postmaster-General  in  St.  John's 
that  I  had  arranged  the  two-cent  postage  rate  with  the 
United  States  and  Newfoundland.  A  few  days  later  I 
received  a  marked  copy  of  a  Newfoundland  paper  saying 
how  capable  a  Government  they  possessed,  seeing  that 
now  they  had  so  successfully  put  through  the  two-cent 
post  for  the  Colony  —  and  that  was  all  the  notice  ever 
taken  of  my  only  little  political  intrigue;  except  that  a 
year  or  two  later,  meeting  Mr.  Meyer  in  Cambridge,  he 
whispered  in  my  ear,  "We  were  going  out  of  office  in  four 
days,  or  you  would  never  have  got  that  two-cent  post 
law  of  yours  through  so  easily." 

In  the  spring  of  1907  I  was  in  England,  and  before  I 
left,  my  old  University  was  good  enough  to  offer  me  an 
honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Medicine  of  Oxford.  As  it 
was  the  first  occasion  that  that  respectable  old  Univer- 
sity had  ever  given  that  particular  degree  to  any  one,  I 
was  naturally  not  a  little  gratified.  The  day  of  the  con- 
ferring of  it  will  ever  live  in  my  memory.  My  cousin,  the 
Professor  of  Paleontology,  half  of  whose  life  was  spent 
in  the  desert  of  Egypt  digging  for  papyri  in  old  dust- 
heaps,  was  considered  the  most  appropriate  person  to 
stand  sponsor  for  me  —  a  would-be  pioneer  of  a  new 
civilization  in  the  sub-arctic. 

The  words  with  which  the  Public  Orator  introduced 
me  to  the  Vice-Chancellor,  being  in  Latin,  seem  to  me 
interesting  as  a  relic  rather  than  as  a  statement  of  fact : 

"Insignissime  Vice-Cancellarie  vosque  egregii   Pro- 


WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?         283 

curatores:  Adest  civis  Britannicus,  hnjus  academise  olim 
alumnus,  nunc  Novum  Orbem  incolentibus  quam  nos- 
tratibus  notus.  Hie  ille  est  qui  quindecim  abhine  annos 
in  litus  Labradorium  profectus  est,  ut  solivagis  in  mari 
Boreali  piscatoribus  ope  medica  succurreret;  quo  in 
munere  obeundo  Oceani  pericula,  quae  ibi  formidosis- 
sima  sunt,  contempsit  dum  miseris  et  maerentibus  so- 
latium ac  lumen  afferret.  Nunc  quantum  homini  licet,  in 
ipsius  Christi  vestigiis,  si  fas  est  dicere,  insistere  videtur, 
vir  vere  Christianus.  Jure  igitur  eum  laudamus  cujus 
laudibus  non  ipse  solum  sed  etiam  Academia  nostra 
ornatur. 

"Prsesenta  ad  vos  Wilfredum  Thomassum  Grenfell, 
ut  admittatur  ad  gradum  Doctoris  in  Medicina  Honoris 
Causa." 

As  we,  the  only  two  Doctors  Grenfell  extant,  marched 
solemnly  back  down  the  aisle  side  by  side,  the  antithesis 
of  what  doctorates  called  for  struck  my  sense  of  humour 
most  forcibly.  I  had  hired  the  gorgeous  robes  of  scarlet 
box  cloth  and  carmine  silk  for  the  occasion,  never  ex- 
pecting to  wear  them  again.  But  some  years  later,  when 
yet  another  honorary  Doctorate,  of  Laws,  was  most  gen- 
erously conferred  upon  me  by  a  University  of  our  Ameri- 
can cousins,  I  felt  it  incumbent  on  me  to  uphold  if  pos- 
sible the  British  end  of  the  ritual.  A  cable  brought  me 
just  in  time  the  box-cloth  surtout.  Commencement  cere- 
monies in  the  United  States  are  in  June;  and  the  latitude 
was  that  of  Rome.  For  years  I  had  spent  the  hot  months 
always  in  the  sub-arctic.  The  assembly  hall  was  small  and 
crowded  to  bursting  —  not  even  all  the  graduating  class 
could  get  in,  much  less  all  their  friends.  The  temperature 
was  in  three  figures.  The  scarlet  box  cloth  got  hotter  and 
hotter  as  we  paraded  in  and  about  the  campus.  My  face 
outrivalled  the  gown  in  colour.  I  have  made  many  lobster 


284  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

men  out  of  the  boiled  limbs  of  those  admirable  adjuncts 
of  a  Northern  diet,  but  I  had  never  expected  to  pose  as 
one  in  the  flesh.  The  most  lasting  impression  which  the 
ceremony  left  on  my  mind  is  of  my  volunteer  summer 
secretary,  who  stood  almost  on  my  toes  as  he  delivered 
the  valedictory  address  of  his  class.  I  still  see  his  grad- 
ually wilting,  boiled  collar,  and  the  tiny  rivulet  which 
trickled  down  his  neck  as  he  warmed  to  his  subject.  We 
were  the  best  of  friends,  but  I  felt  that  glow  of  semi- 
satisfaction  that  comes  to  the  man  who  finds  that  he  is 
no  longer  the  only  one  seasick  on  board. 

About  this  time  King  Edward  most  graciously  pre- 
sented me,  as  one  of  his  birthday  honours,  with  a  Com- 
panionship in  the  Order  of  St.  Michael  and  St.  George  — 
most  useful  persons  for  any  man  to  have  as  companions, 
especially  in  a  work  like  ours,  both  being  famous  for 
downing  dragons  and  devils.  My  American  friends  im- 
mediately knighted  me.  The  papers  and  magazines 
knighted  me  in  both  the  United  States  and  Canada.  But 
that  got  me  into  trouble,  for  only  kings  can  make  pawns 
into  knights,  and  I  had  to  appeal  several  times  to  the 
Associated  Press  to  save  myself  being  dubbed  poseur. 
I  have  protested  at  meetings  when  the  chairman  has 
knighted  me;  at  banquets,  when  the  master  of  ceremo- 
nies has  knighted  me.  I  gave  it  up  lest  accusation  should 
arise  against  me,  when  at  a  semi-religious  meeting  I  ut- 
tered a  feeble  protest  against  the  title  to  which  I  have  no 
right,  and  my  introducer  merely  repeated  it  the  more 
firmly,  informing  the  audience  meanwhile  that  I  was 
"too  modest  to  use  it." 

There  was  attached  to  the  conferring  of  the  Order  one 
elective  latitude  —  it  could  either  be  sent  out  or  wait  till 
I  returned  to  England  and  attended  a  levee  with  the 
other  recipients.  I  had  a  great  desire  to  see  the  Eling,  and, 


WHO  HATH  DESmED  THE  SEA?        285 

though  it  meant  a  year's  waiting,  I  requested  to  be  al- 
lowed to  do  so.  This  not  only  was  most  courteously 
granted,  but  also  the  permission  to  let  my  presence  in 
England  be  known  to  the  Hereditary  Grand  Chamber- 
lain, and  the  King  would  give  me  a  private  audience. 
When  the  day  arrived,  I  repaired  to  Buckingham  Palace, 
where  I  waited  for  an  hour  in  the  reception  room  in 
company  with  a  small,  stout  clergyman  who  was  very 
affable.  I  learned  later  that  he  was  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  who  was  carrying  a  fat  Bible  from  Boston, 
England,  I  believe,  to  be  presented  to  the  United  States 
of  America. 

At  last  Sir  Frederick  Treves,  who  kindly  acted  as  my 
introducer,  took  me  up  to  the  King's  study  —  that  King 
whose  life  his  skill  had  saved.  There  a  most  courteous  gen- 
tleman made  me  perfectly  at  home,  and  talked  of  Lab- 
rador and  North  Newfoundland  and  our  work  as  if  he 
had  lived  there.  He  asked  especially  about  the  American 
helpers  and  interest,  and  laughed  heartily  when  I  told 
him  how  many  freebom  Americans  had  gladly  taken  the 
oath  of  loyalty  to  His  Majesty,  when  called  up  to  act  as 
special  constables  for  me  in  his  oldest  Colony.  He  left  the 
impression  on  my  mind  that  he  was  a  real  Englishman  in 
spirit,  though  he  had  spoken  with  what  I  took  to  be  a 
slight  German  accent.  The  sports  and  games  of  the  Col- 
ony I  had  noticed  interested  him  very  much,  and  all  ref- 
erences to  the  splendid  seafaring  genius  of  the  people  also 
found  an  appreciative  echo  in  his  heart.  When  at  last  he 
handed  me  a  long  box  with  a  gorgeous  medal  and  ribbon, 
and  bade  me  good-bye,  I  vowed  I  could  sing  "God  save 
the  King"  louder  than  ever  if  I  could  do  so  without  har- 
rowing the  feelings  of  my  more  tuneful  neighbours. 

When  later,  as  a  major  in  an  American  surgical  unit  in 
France,  I  was  serving  the  R.A.M.C.,  the  ribbon  of  the 


286  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Order  was  actually  of  real  service  to  me.  It  undoubtedly 
opened  some  closed  doors,  though  it  proved  a  puzzle  to 
every  A.D.M.S,  to  whom  I  had  to  explain  the  anomaly  of 
my  position  when  I  had  to  go  and  worry  him  for  permis- 
sion to  cross  the  road  or  some  new  imaginary  line.  In 
England,  and  even  in  America,  I  found  that  the  fact  that 
the  King  had  recognized  one's  work  was  a  real  material 
asset.  It  was  a  credential  —  only  on  a  larger  scale  —  like 
that  from  our  Minister  to  the  Colonies,  the  Marquis  of 
Ripon,  who  kindly  had  given  me  his  blessing  in  writing 
when  first  I  visited  Canada. 

How  far  signs  of  superiority  are  permissible  is  to  my 
mind  an  open  question.  Hereditary  human  superiority 
does  not  necessarily  exist,  because  selective  precautions 
are  not  taken,  and  the  environment  of  the  superior  is  very 
apt  to  enfeeble  the  physical  machine,  anyhow.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  hereditary  superiority  of  a  man's  soul,  being 
outside  my  sphere,  I  leave  to  the  theologians.  History, 
which  is  the  school  of  experience,  belies  the  theory,  what- 
ever current  science  may  say.  As  for  the  giving  of  hered- 
itary titles,  it  is  significant  that  they  do  not  as  a  rule  go 
to  scholars  or  even  scientific  men,  but  to  physical  fight- 
ers, being  physical  rewards  for  material  services.  When 
these  are  in  the  possession  of  offspring  no  longer  capable 
of  rendering  such  services,  it  appears  ridiculous  that  they 
should  sail  under  false  colours. 

To  make  a  man  a  hereditary  duke  for  being  humble  and 
modest,  or  hereditary  marquis  for  being  unselfish  and 
generous,  or  an  earl  for  being  a  man  of  peace,  and  a  bene- 
factor in  the  things  which  make  for  peace,  such  as  a  good 
husband  and  father  and  comrade,  has,  so  far  as  I  know, 
never  been  tried.  Some  of  the  so-called  lesser  honours, 
such  as  knighthood,  are  reserved  for  these.  However,  an 
order  of  knightly  citizens,  so  long  as  they  are  real  knights. 


WHO  HATH  DESIRED  THE  SEA?         287 

is,  after  all,  little  more  than  the  gold  key  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  or  the  red  triangle  of  the  Y.M.C.A.  worker,  or  the 
Red  Cross  badge  of  the  nurse.  We  are  human,  anyhow, 
and  such  concessions,  seeing  that  they  do  have  an  un- 
doubted stimulating  value  in  the  present  stage  of  our 
development,  to  an  Englishman  seem  permissible. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT 

Labrador  will  never  be  a  "  vineland,"  a  land  of  corn  and 
wine,  or  a  country  where  fenced  cities  will  be  needed  to 
keep  out  the  milk  and  honey.  But  though  there  may  be 
other  sections  of  the  Empire  that  can  produce  more  dol- 
lars, Labrador  will,  like  Norway  and  Sweden,  produce 
Vikings,  and  it  is  said  that  the  man  behind  the  gun  is  still 
of  some  moment. 

In  past  years  we  have  made  quite  extensive  experi- 
ments in  trying  to  adapt  possible  food  supplies  to  this 
climate.  I  had  seventeen  bags  of  the  hardiest  cereal  seeds 
known  sent  me.  They  consisted  of  barley  from  Lapland, 
from  Russia,  from  Abyssinia,  Mansbury  barley  and  Fin- 
nish oats.  All  the  seeds  came  from  the  experimental  sta- 
tion at  Rampart,  Alaska,  and  were  grown  in  latitude 
63°  30',  which  is  two  degrees  north  of  Cape  Chidley. 

I  find  in  the  notes  of  one  of  my  earliest  voyages  my 
satisfaction  at  the  fact  that  a  storm  with  lightning  and 
thunder  had  just  passed  over  the  boat  and  freshened  up 
some  rhubarb  which  I  was  growing  in  a  box.  It  had  been 
presented  to  me  by  the  Governor  to  carry  down  to  Battle 
Harbour,  and  I  was  very  eager  that  it,  my  first  agricul- 
tural venture,  should  not  fail. 

Everywhere  along  the  coast  the  inability  to  get  a 
proper  diet,  owing  to  the  difficulties  of  successful  farming 
even  on  ever  so  small  a  scale,  had  aroused  my  mind  to 
the  necessity  of  doing  something  along  that  line.  In  one 
small  cottage  I  saw  a  poor  woman  zealously  guarding  an 
aged  rooster. 

"Have  you  got  a  hen?"  I  asked  her. 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT  289 

"No,  Doctor;  I  had  one,  but  she  died  last  year." 

*'  Then  why  ever  do  you  keep  that  rooster?" 

"Oh!  I  hopes  some  day  to  get  a  hen.  I've  had  him  five 
years.  The  last  manager  of  the  mill  gave  him  to  me,  but 
you'se  sees  he  can't  never  go  out  and  walk  around  be- 
cause of  the  dogs,  so  I  just  keeps  he  under  that  settle." 

Pathetic  as  were  her  efforts  at  stock  farming,  I  must 
admit  that  my  sympathies  were  all  with  the  incarcerated 
rooster. 

The  problem  of  the  dogs  seemed  an  insurmountable 
one.  The  Moravians'  records  abound  in  stories  of  their 
destructiveness.  Mr.  Hesketh  Pritchard  writes:  "Dr. 
Grenfell  records  two  children  and  one  man  killed  by  the 
dogs.  This  is  fortunately  a  much  less  terrible  record  than 
that  shown  farther  north  by  the  Moravian  Missions.  The 
savage  dogs  did  great  harm  at  those  stations  one  winter." 
Among  other  accidents,  a  boy  of  thirteen,  strong  and  well, 
was  coming  home  from  his  father's  kayak  to  his  mother. 
After  some  time,  as  he  did  not  arrive,  they  went  to  search 
for  him  and  found  that  the  dogs  had  already  killed  and 
eaten  a  good  part  of  him.  A  full-grown  man,  driving  to 
Battle  Harbour  Hospital,  was  killed  by  his  dogs  almost 
at  our  doors. 

The  wolves  of  the  country  only  pack  when  deer  are 
about.  As  a  contrast  to  our  dogs,  wolves  have  never  been 
known  to  kill  a  man  in  Labrador,  so  it  would  be  more  cor- 
rect to  speak  of  a  doggish  wolf  than  a  wolfish  dog.  It  is 
an  odd  thing  and  a  fortunate  one  that  in  this  country, 
where  it  is  very  common  to  have  been  bitten  by  a  dog,  we 
never  have  been  able  to  find  any  trace  of  hydrophobia. 

A  visitor  returning  to  New  York  after  a  summer  on 
the  coast  wrote  as  follows:  "One  of  my  lasting  remem- 
brances of  Battle  Harbour  will  be  the  dreadful  dogs.  The 
Mission  team  were  on  an  island  far  removed,  but  there 


290  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

were  a  number  of  settlers'  dogs  which  delighted  in  making 
the  nights  hideous.  Never  before  have  I  seen  dogs  stand 
up  hke  men  and  grapple  with  each  other  in  a  fight,  and 
when  made  to  move  on,  renew  the  battle  round  the  corner." 

Our  efforts  at  agriculture  had  taught  us  not  to  expect 
too  much  of  the  country.  A  New  Zealand  cousin,  Martyn 
Spencer,  a  graduate  of  Macdonald  College  of  Agricul- 
ture, gave  us  two  years'  work.  His  experience  showed  that 
while  dogs  continued  to  be  in  common  use,  cattle-raising 
was  impossible.  Of  a  flock  of  forty  Herdwick  sheep  given 
by  Dr.  Wakefield,  the  dogs  killed  twenty-seven  at  one 
time.  Angora  goats,  which  we  had  imported,  perished  in 
the  winter  for  lack  of  proper  food.  Our  land  cost  so  much 
to  reclaim  for  hay,  being  soaked  in  humic  acid,  that  we 
had  always  to  import  that  commodity  at  a  cost  which 
made  more  cows  than  absolutely  essential  very  inadvis- 
able. Weasels,  rats,  hawks,  and  vermin  needed  a  man's 
whole  time  if  our  chickens  were  to  be  properly  guarded 
and  repay  keeping  at  all.  An  alfalfa  sent  us  from  Wash- 
ington did  well,  and  potatoes  also  gave  a  fair  return, 
though  our  summer  frosts  often  destroyed  whole  patches 
of  the  latter.  Our  imported  plum  and  crabapple  trees  were 
ringed  by  mice  beneath  the  snow  in  winter.  At  a  farm 
which  we  cleared  nine  miles  up  a  bay,  so  as  to  have  it 
removed  from  the  polar  current,  our  oats  never  ripened, 
and  our  turnips  and  cabbage  did  not  flourish  in  every  case. 
We  could  not  plant  early  enough,  owing  to  the  ground 
being  frozen  till  July  some  years. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  we  looked  at  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  square  miles  on  which  caribou  could  live 
and  increase  without  any  help  from  man,  and  indeed  in 
spite  of  all  his  machinations,  our  attention  was  naturally 
turned  to  reindeer  farming,  and  I  went  to  Washington  to 
consult  Dr.  Sheldon  Jackson,  the  Presbyterian  mission- 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT  291 

ary  from  Alaska.  It  was  he  who  had  pioneered  the  intro- 
duction by  the  United  States  Government  of  domestic 
reindeer  into  Alaska.  At  Washington  we  received  nothing 
but  encouragement.  Reindeer  could  make  our  wilderness 
smile.  They  would  cost  only  the  protection  necessary. 
They  multiply  steadily,  breeding  every  year  for  eight  or 
ten  years  after  their  second  season.  A  selected  herd  should 
double  itself  every  three  years. 

The  skins  are  very  valuable  —  there  is  no  better  non- 
conductor of  heat.  The  centre  of  the  hair  is  not  a  hollow 
cylinder,  but  a  series  of  air  bubbles  which  do  not  soak 
water,  and  therefore  can  be  used  with  advantage  for  life- 
saving  cushions.  The  skins  are  splendid  also  for  motor 
robes,  and  now  invaluable  in  the  air  service.  The  meat  is 
tender  and  appetizing,  and  sold  as  a  game  delicacy  in  New 
York.  The  deer  fatten  well  on  the  abundant  mosses  of  a 
country  such  as  ours. 

Sir  William  MacGregor,  the  Governor  of  Newfound- 
land at  the  time,  had  samples  of  the  mosses  collected 
around  the  coast  and  sent  to  Kew  Botanical  Gardens  for 
positive  identification.  The  Cladonia  Rangiferina,  or 
Iceland  moss,  proved  very  abundant.  It  was  claimed, 
however,  that  the  reindeer  would  eat  any  of  such  plants 
and  shrubs  as  our  coast  offers  in  summer. 

As  long  ago  as  the  year  1903  my  interest  in  the  domes- 
tication of  deer  had  led  me  to  experiment  with  a  young 
caribou.  We  had  him  on  the  Strathcona  nearly  all  one 
summer.  He  was  a  great  pet  on  board,  and  demonstrated 
how  easily  trained  these  animals  are.  He  followed  me 
about  like  a  dog,  and  called  after  me  as  I  left  the  ship's 
side  in  a  boat  if  we  did  not  take  him  with  us.  He  was  as 
inquisitive  as  a  monkey  or  as  the  black  bear  which  we  had 
had  two  years  before.  We  twice  caught  him  in  the  chart- 
room  chewing  up  white  paper,  for  on  his  first  raid  there  he 


292  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

had  found  an  apple  just  magnanimously  sent  us  from  the 
shore  as  a  delicacy. 

Friends,  inspired  by  Mr.  William  Howell  Reed,  of  Bos- 
ton, collected  the  money  for  a  consignment  of  reindeer, 
and  we  accordingly  sent  to  Lapland  to  purchase  as  many 
of  the  animals  as  we  could  afford.  The  expense  was  not  so 
much  in  the  cost  of  the  deer  as  in  the  transport.  They 
could  not  be  shipped  till  they  had  themselves  hauled 
down  to  the  beach  enough  moss  to  feed  them  on  their  pas- 
sage across  the  Atlantic.  Between  two  hundred  and  fifty 
and  three  hundred  were  purchased,  and  three  Lapp  fam- 
ilies hired  to  teach  some  of  our  local  people  how  to  herd 
them.  When  at  last  snow  enough  fell  for  the  sledges  to 
haul  the  moss  down  to  the  landwash,  it  was  dark  all  day 
around  the  North  Cape. 

Fifty  years  hence  in  all  probability  the  Lapps  will  be 
an  extinct  race,  as  even  within  the  past  twelve  or  fifteen 
years,  districts  in  which  thousands  of  domesticated  rein- 
deer grazed,  now  possess  but  a  few  hundreds. 

The  good  ship  Anita,  which  conveyed  the  herd  to  us, 
steamed  in  for  southern  Newfoundland  and  then  worked 
her  way  North  as  far  as  the  ice  would  permit.  At  St. 
Anthony  everything  was  frozen  up,  and  the  men  walked 
out  of  the  harbour  mouth  on  the  sea  ice  to  meet  the 
steamer  bringing  the  deer.  The  whole  three  hundred  were 
landed  on  the  ice  in  Cremailliere,  some  three  miles  to  the 
southward  of  St.  Anthony  Hospital,  and  though  many 
fell  through  into  the  sea,  they  proved  hardy  and  resource- 
ful enough  to  reach  the  land,  where  they  gathered  around 
the  tinkling  bells  of  the  old  deer  without  a  single  loss 
from  land  to  land. 

One  of  our  workers  at  St.  Anthony  that  winter  wrote 
that  "the  most  exciting  moment  was  when  the  woman 
was  lowered  in  her  own  sledge  over  the  steamer's  side 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT         293 

on  to  the  ice,  drawn  to  the  shore,  and  transferred  to  one 
of  Dr.  Grenf ell's  komatiks,  as  she  had  hurt  her  leg  on  the 
voyage.  The  sight  of  all  the  strange  men  surrounding  her 
frightened  her,  but  she  was  finally  reassured,  threw  aside 
her  coverings,  and  clutched  her  frying-pan,  which  she 
had  hidden  under  a  sheepskin.  When  she  had  it  safely  in 
her  arms  she  allowed  the  men  to  lift  her  and  put  her  on 
the  komatik."  When  the  doctor  at  the  hospital  advised 
that  her  leg  would  best  be  treated  by  operation,  the  man 
said,  "She  is  a  pretty  old  woman,  and  does  n't  need  a 
very  good  leg  much  longer."  She  was  thirty-five! 

An  Irish  friend  had  volunteered  to  come  out  and  watch 
the  experiment  in  our  interest  —  and  this  he  did  most 
eflSciently.  The  deer  flourished  and  increased  rapidly. 
Unfortunately  the  Lapps  did  not  like  our  country.  They 
complained  that  North  Newfoundland  was  too  cold  for 
them  and  they  wanted  to  return  home.  One  family  left 
after  the  first  year.  A  rise  in  salary  kept  three  of  the  men, 
but  the  following  season  they  wanted  more  than  we  had 
funds  to  meet,  and  we  were  forced  to  decide,  wrongly,  I 
fear,  to  let  them  go.  The  old  herder  warned  me,  "No 
Lapps,  no  deer";  but  I  thought  too  much  in  terms  of 
Mission  finances,  the  Government  having  withdrawn 
their  grant  toward  the  herders'  salaries.  Trusting  to  the 
confidence  in  their  own  ability  of  the  locally  trained  men, 
I  therefore  let  the  Lapp  herders  go  home.  The  love  of  the 
Lapps  for  their  deer  is  like  a  fisherman's  for  his  vessel, 
and  seems  a  master  passion.  They  appeared  even  to 
grudge  our  having  any  deer  tethered  away  from  their 
care. 

To  us  it  seemed  strange  that  these  Lapps  always  con- 
tended that  the  work  was  too  hard,  and  that  the  only 
reason  that  they  were  always  gone  from  camp  was  that 
there  were  no  wolves  to  keep  the  herd  together.  They 


294  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

claimed  that  we  must  have  a  big  fence  or  the  deer  would 
go  off  into  the  country.  They,  of  course,  both  when  with 
us  and  in  Lapland  as  well,  lived  and  slept  where  the  herd 
was.  They  told  us  that  the  deer  no  longer  obeyed  the 
warning  summons  of  the  old  does'  bells,  having  no  nat- 
ural enemy  to  fear;  and  one  told  me,  "Money  no  good. 
Doctor,  if  herd  no  increase."  Reindeer  seemed  to  be  the 
complement  of  their  souls. 

Meanwhile  the  Alaskan  experiment  was  realizing  all 
of  Dr.  Jackson's  happiest  hopes;  but  it  had  a  strong 
Government  grant  and  backing  and  plenty  of  skilled 
superintendence.  The  lack  of  those  were  our  weaknesses. 
Our  deer  thrived  splendidly  and  multiplied  as  we  had 
predicted.  We  went  thirty  miles  in  a  day  with  them  with 
ease.  We  hauled  our  firewood  out,  using  half  a  dozen 
hauling  teams  every  day.  Every  fortnight  during  the 
rush  of  patients  at  the  hospital  in  summer  we  could  afford 
to  kill  a  deer.  The  milk  was  excellent  in  quality  and 
sweet,  and  preserved  perfectly  well  in  rubber-capped 
bottles.  The  cheese  was  nourishing  and  a  welcome  addi- 
tion to  the  local  diet.  At  the  close  of  the  fourth  year  we 
had  a  thousand  deer. 

A  paper  of  the  serious  standing  of  the  "Wall  Street 
Journal,"  writing  at  about  that  time,  under  the  title 
"Reindeer  Venison  from  Alaska,"  had  this  to  say:  "At 
different  times  in  the  past  twenty  years  the  Government 
imported  reindeer  into  Alaska  —  about  twelve  hundred 
in  all  —  in  hopes  to  provide  food  for  the  natives  in  the 
future.  The  plan  caused  some  amusement  and  some  criti- 
cism at  the  time.  Subsequent  developments,  however, 
have  justified  the  attempt.  The  herds  have  now  increased 
to  about  forty  thousand  animals,  and  are  rapidly  be- 
coming still  more  numerous.  The  natives  own  about  two 
thirds  of  the  number.  Shipments  of  meat  have  been  made 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT         295 

to  the  Pacific  Coast  cities.  Last  year  the  sales  of  venison 
and  skins  amounted  to  $25,000.  It  is  claimed  that  the 
vast  tundra,  or  treeless  frozen  plains  of  Alaska,  will 
support  at  least  ten  million  animals.  The  federal  authori- 
ties in  charge  are  so  optimistic  of  the  future  outlook  that 
the  prediction  is  made  that  within  twenty-five  years  the 
United  States  can  draw  a  considerable  part  of  its  meat 
supply  from  Alaska."  What  can  be  done  in  Alaska  can  be 
done  in  Labrador,  and  with  its  better  facilities  for  ship- 
ping and  handling  the  product,  the  greater  future  ought 
to  be  the  prize  of  the  latter  country. 

In  the  spring  of  1912  there  were  five  hundred  fawns, 
and  at  one  time  we  had  gathered  into  our  corral  for  tag- 
ging no  less  than  twelve  hundred  and  fifty  reindeer.  Of 
these  we  sold  fifty  to  the  Government  of  Canada  for  the 
Peace  River  District.  There  they  were  lost  because  they 
were  placed  in  a  flat  country,  densely  wooded  with  alders, 
and  not  near  the  barren  lands.  We  also  sold  a  few  to 
clubs,  in  order  to  try  and  introduce  the  deer.  These  sales 
would  have  done  the  experiment  no  injury,  but  with  the 
fifty  to  Canada  went  my  chief  herder  and  two  of  my  other 
herders  from  Labrador.  This  loss,  from  which  we  never 
recovered,  coincided  with  an  outbreak  of  hostility  to- 
ward the  deer  among  the  resident  population,  who  live 
entirely  on  the  sea  edge.  Only  long  afterwards  did  we  find 
out  that  it  was  partly  because  they  feared  that  we  would 
force  deer  lipon  them  and  do  away  with  their  dogs.  The 
local  Government  official  told  me  only  the  other  day  that 
the  second  generation  from  this  would  have  very  little 
good  to  say  of  the  short-sightedness  of  these  men  who 
let  such  a  valuable  industry  fail  to  succeed. 

With  the  increasing  cares  of  the  enlarging  Mission, 
with  Lieutenant  Lindsay  gone  back  to  Ireland,  and  no 
one  to  superintend  the  herding,  the  successful  handling  of 


296  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

the  deer  imperceptibly  declined.  The  tags  on  the  ears 
were  no  longer  put  in;  the  bells  were  not  replaced  in  the 
old  localities.  The  herd  was  driven,  not  led  as  before  — 
was  paid  for,  not  loved.  These  differences  at  the  time 
were  marked  by  increasing  poaching  on  the  herd  by  the 
people.  Here  and  there  at  first  they  had  killed  a  deer  mi- 
known  to  us;  and  finally  we  caught  one  hidden  in  a  man's 
woodpile,  and  several  offenders  were  sent  to  jail. 

We  appealed  to  the  Newfoundland  Government  for 
protection,  as  to  be  policeman  and  magistrate  for  the 
herd  which  one  held  in  trust  was  an  anomalous  position. 
I  was  ordered  by  them  to  sit  on  the  bench  when  these 
cases  were  up,  as  I  did  not  own  the  deer.  The  section  of 
land  on  which  we  had  the  animals  is  a  peninsula  of  ap- 
proximately one  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles.  It  is  cut 
off  by  a  narrow,  low  neck  about  eight  miles  long.  During 
all  our  years  of  acquaintance  with  the  coast  not  a  dozen 
caribou  had  been  killed  on  it,  for  they  do  not  cross  the 
neck  to  the  northward.  But  when  we  applied  for  a  na- 
tional preserve,  that  no  deer  at  all  might  be  killed  on  the 
peninsula,  and  so  we  might  run  a  big  fence  across  the 
neck  with  a  couple  of  herders'  houses  along  the  line  of  it, 
a  petition,  signed  by  part  of  the  "voters,"  went  up  to  St. 
John's,  against  such  permission  being  granted  us.  The 
petition  stated  that  the  deer  destroyed  the  people's 
"gardens,"  that  they  were  a  danger  to  the  lives  of  the 
settlers,  whose  dogs  went  wild  when  they  crossed  their 
path,  and  they  claimed  that  the  herd  "led  men  into  temp- 
tation," because  if  there  were  no  reindeer  to  tempt  men 
to  kill  them,  there  would  be  none  killed.  The  deer  thus 
were  supposed  to  be  the  cause  of  making  cattle-thieves 
out  of  honest  men !  The  result  was  that  a  law  was  passed 
that  no  domestic  reindeer  might  be  shot  north  of  the  line 
of  the  neck  for  which  we  had  applied,  and  which  we 


A  PART  OF  THE  REINDEER  HERD 


REINDEER  TEAMS  MEETING  A  DOG  TEAM 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT         297 

intended  to  fence.  This  only  made  matters  ten  times 
worse,  for  if  the  deer  either  strayed  or  else  were  driven 
across  the  line,  the  killing  of  them  was  thus  legalized. 

The  deer  had  cost  us,  landed,  some  fifty-one  dollars 
apiece.  Three  years  of  herding  under  the  adverse  condi- 
tions of  lack  of  support  from  either  Government  or  people 
had  not  lessened  the  per  caput  expense  very  materially. 
If  we  had  shot  some  one's  fifty-dollar  cow,  our  name 
would  have  been  anathema  —  but  we  lost  two  hundred 
and  fifty  deer  one  winter.  In  addition  to  this,  when  we 
moved  the  deer  to  a  spot  near  another  village  on  a  high 
bluff,  over  a  hundred  died  in  summer,  either  —  according 
to  the  report  of  the  herders  —  from  falling  over  the  cliffs 
driven  by  dogs,  or  of  a  sickness  of  which  we  could  not  dis- 
cover the  nature,  though  we  thought  that  it  resembled 
a  kind  of  pneumonia. 

The  poaching  got  so  bad  that  we  took  every  means  in 
our  power  to  catch  the  guilty  parties.  But  it  was  a  very 
diflficult  thing  to  do.  A  dead  deer  lies  quiet,  keeps  for 
weeks  where  he  falls  in  our  winter  climate,  and  can  be 
surreptitiously  removed  by  day  or  night.  The  little  Lapp 
dogs  occasionally  scented  them  beneath  the  snow,  and 
many  tell-tale  "paunches"  showed  where  deer  had  been 
killed  and  carried  off. 

I  had  been  treating  the  hunchback  boy  and  only  child 
of  a  fisherman  for  whom  I  had  very  great  respect.  His  was 
the  home  where  the  Methodist  minister  always  boarded, 
and  he  was  looked  upon  as  a  pillar  of  piety.  After  a 
straightening  by  frame  treatment,  the  boy's  spine  had 
been  ankylosed  by  an  operation;  and  as  every  one  felt 
sorry  for  the  little  fellow,  we  were  often  able  to  send  him 
gifts.  One  day  the  father  came  to  me,  evidently  in  great 
trouble,  to  have  what  proved  to  be  a  most  uncommon 
private  talk.  To  my  utter  surprise  he  began:  "Doctor,  I 


298  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

can  no  longer  live  and  keep  the  secret  that  I  shot  two  of 
your  reindeer.  I  have  brought  you  ninety  dollars,  all  the 
cash  that  I  have,  and  I  want  to  ask  your  forgiveness,  after 
all  you  have  done  for  me,"  Needless  to  say,  it  was  freely 
given,  but  it  made  me  feel  more  than  ever  that  the  deer 
must  be  moved  to  some  other  country. 

It  was  about  this  year  that  the  Government  for  the  first 
time  granted  us  a  resident  policeman  —  previously  we  had 
had  to  be  our  own  police.  Fortunately  the  man  sent  was 
quite  a  smart  fellow.  A  dozen  or  so  deer  had  been  killed 
along  the  section  of  our  coast,  and  so  skilfully  that  even 
though  it  was  done  under  the  noses  of  the  herders  no  evi- 
dence to  convict  could  be  obtained.  It  so  happened,  how- 
ever, that  while  one  of  the  herders  was  eating  a  piece  of 
one  of  the  slaughtered  animals  which  he  had  discovered, 
and  that  the  thieves  had  not  been  able  to  carry  off,  his 
teeth  met  on  a  still  well-formed  rifle  bullet  of  number  22 
calibre.  This  type  of  rifle  we  knew  was  scarcely  ever  used 
on  our  coast,  and  the  policeman  at  once  made  a  round  to 
take  every  one.  He  returned  with  three,  which  was  really 
the  whole  stock. 

A  piece  of  meat  was  now  placed  at  a  reasonable  dis- 
tance, also  some  bags  of  snow,  flour,  etc.,  and  a  number 
of  bullets  fired  into  them.  These  bullets  were  then  all  pri- 
vately marked,  and  shuffled  up.  Our  own  deductions  were 
made,  and  a  man  from  twenty  miles  away  summoned, 
arrested,  and  brought  up.  He  brought  witnesses  and 
friends,  apparently  to  impress  the  court  —  one  espe- 
cially, who  most  vehemently  protested  that  he  knew  the 
owner  of  the  rifle,  and  that  he  was  never  out  of  his  house 
at  the  time  that  the  deer  would  have  been  killed.  In  court 
was  a  man,  for  twenty-seven  years  agent  in  Labrador  for 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company  —  a  crack  shot  and  a  most 
expert  hunter.  He  was  called  up,  given  the  big  pile  of  bid- 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT  299 

lets,  and  told  to  try  and  sort  them,  by  the  groove  marks, 
into  those  fired  by  the  three  different  rifles.  We  then 
handed  him  the  control  bullet,  and  he  put  it  instantly  on 
one  of  the  piles.  It  was  the  pile  that  had  been  fired  from 
the  rifle  of  the  accused.  This  man,  in  testifying,  in  order 
to  clear  himself,  had  let  out  the  fact  that  his  rifle  had  not 
been  kept  in  his  house,  but  in  the  house  of  the  vociferous 
witness  —  whom  we  now  arrested,  convicted,  and  con- 
demned to  jail  for  six  months  or  two  hundred  dollars  fine 
—  the  latter  alternative  being  given  only  because  we 
knew  that  he  had  not  the  necessary  sum.  Protesting 
as  loudly  as  he  had  previously  witnessed,  he  went  to  jail; 
but  the  rest  let  out  threats  that  they  were  coming  back 
with  others  to  set  him  free.  We  had  only  a  frame  wooden 
jail,  and  a  rheumatic  jailer  of  over  seventy  years,  hired  to 
hobble  around  by  day  and  see  that  the  prisoners  were 
fed  and  kept  orderly.  We  announced,  therefore,  that  our 
Hudson  Bay  friend,  with  his  rifle  loaded,  would  be  night 
jailer. 

A  few  days  passed  by.  The  prisoner  did  not  like  im- 
proving the  public  thoroughfare  for  our  benefit,  while 
those  "  who  were  just  as  bad  as  he"  went  free.  Our  old 
jailer  took  good  care  that  he  should  hear  what  good  times 
they  were  having  and  laughing  at  him  for  being  caught. 
Indeed,  he  liked  it  so  little  that  he  gave  the  whole  plot 
away  —  at  least  what  he  called  the  whole.  This  landed 
four  more  of  his  friends  in  the  same  honest  and  public- 
spirited  occupation  which  he  was  himseK  pursuing; 
though  all  escaped  shortly  afterwards  by  paying  fines  to 
the  Government  which  aggregated  some  eight  hundred 
dollars  —  which  sum  was  largely  paid  by  others  for 
them. 

There  was  no  way,  however,  definitely  to  stop  the 
steady  decrease  in  the  numbers  of  the  herd;  and  though 


300  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

we  moved  them  to  new  pastures  around  the  coast,  and 
fenced  them  in  such  small  mobile  corrals  as  we  could 
afford,  they  were  not  safe.  On  several  occasions  we  found 
dead  deer  with  buckshot  in  them,  which  had  "fallen  over 
the  cliffs."  Twice  we  discovered  that  deer  had  even  been 
killed  within  our  own  corral.  One  had  been  successfully 
removed,  and  the  other  trussed-up  carcass  had  been  hid- 
den until  a  good  opportunity  offered  for  it  to  follow  suit. 
I  do  not  wish  to  leave  the  impression  on  the  minds  of  my 
readers  that  every  man  on  this  part  of  the  coast  is  a 
poacher.  Far  from  it.  But  the  majority  of  the  best  men 
were  against  the  reindeer  experiment  from  the  moment 
that  the  first  trouble  arose.  A  new  obligation  of  social 
life  was  introduced.  This  implied  restraint  in  such  trifling 
things  as  their  having  to  fence  their  tiny  gardens,  protect 
small  stray  hay-pooks,  and  discriminate  into  what  they 
discharged  their  ubiquitous  blunderbusses. 

Meanwhile  the  steadily  increasing  demand  for  meat, 
especially  since  the  war  began,  caused  outside  interest  in 
the  experiment;  and  both  the  owners  of  Anticosti  Island, 
and  a  firm  in  the  West  who  were  commencing  reindeer 
farming  on  a  commercial  basis,  opened  negotiations  with 
us  for  the  purchase  of  our  herd.  In  the  original  outlay, 
however,  the  Canadian  Dominion  Government  had  taken 
an  interest  to  the  amount  of  five  thousand  dollars,  so  it 
was  necessary  to  get  their  opinion  on  the  subject.  Their 
Department  of  Indian  Affairs  happened  to  be  looking 
for  some  satisfactory  way  of  helping  out  their  Labrador 
Indian  population.  They  sent  down  and  made  inquiries, 
and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  would  themselves 
take  the  matter  up,  as  they  had  done  with  buffalo,  elk, 
and  other  animals  in  the  West. 

In  1917  all  preparations  for  transferring  the  deer  were 
made,  but  war  conditions  called  their  steamer  away  and 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT         301 

transport  was  delayed  until  1918.  Again  their  steamer 
was  called  off,  so  we  decided  to  take  the  deer  across  our- 
selves in  our  splendid  three-masted  schooner,  the  George 
B.  Cluett.  She,  alas,  was  delayed  in  America  by  the  sub- 
marine scare,  and  it  was  the  end  of  September  instead  of 
June  when  she  finally  arrived.  It  was  a  poor  season  for  our 
dangerous  North  coast  and  a  very  bad  time  for  moving 
the  deer,  whose  rutting  season  was  just  beginning.  My 
herders,  too,  were  now  much  reduced  in  numbers.  Most 
of  them  had  gone  to  the  war,  and  as  one  had  been  sick  all 
summer,  practically  only  two  were  available.  To  add  to 
the  difficulty,  many  small  herds  of  reindeer  were  loose 
in  the  country  outside  the  corral. 

However,  we  felt  that  the  venture  must  be  attempted 
at  all  hazards,  even  if  it  delayed  our  beautiful  ship  taking 
a  cargo  of  food  to  the  Allies  —  as  she  was  scheduled  to  do 
as  soon  as  possible  —  and  though  it  was  a  serious  risk  to 
remain  anchored  in  the  shallow  open  roadstead  off  the 
spot  where  the  deer  had  to  be  taken  aboard.  The  work 
was  all  new  to  us.  The  deer,  instead  of  being  tame  as 
they  had  previously  been,  were  wild  at  best,  and  wilder 
still  from  their  breeding  season.  The  days  went  by,  and 
we  succeeded  in  getting  only  a  few  aboard.  We  were  all 
greenhorns  with  the  lassoes  and  lariats  which  we  impro- 
vised. A  gale  of  wind  came  on  and  nothing  could  be  done 
but  lie  up. 

Then  followed  a  fine  Sunday  morning.  It  was  intensely 
interesting  to  note  the  attitude  which  my  crew  could 
take  toward  my  decision  to  work  all  day  after  morning 
prayers.  We  talked  briefly  over  the  emphasis  laid  by  the 
four  Evangelists  on  Christ's  attitude  toward  the  day  of 
rest,  and  what  it  might  mean,  if  we  allowed  a  rare  fine 
day  to  go  by,  to  that  long  section  of  coast  which  we  had 
not  yet  this  year  visited,  and  which  might  thus  miss  the 


302  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

opportunity  of  seeing  a  doctor  before  Christmas.  As  since 
this  war  has  begun  I  have  felt  that  the  Christ  Vvhom  I 
wanted  to  follow  would  be  in  France,  so  now  I  felt  that 
the  Christ  of  my  ideal  would  go  ashore  and  get  those  deer 
in  spite  of  the  great  breach  of  convention  which  it  would 
mean  for  a  "Mission"  doctor  to  work  in  any  way,  except 
in  the  many  ways  he  has  to  work  every  Simday  of  his  life. 
The  whole  crew  followed  me  when  I  went  ashore,  saying 
that  they  shared  my  view  —  all  except  the  mate,  who 
spent  his  Sunday  in  bed.  Idleness  is  not  rest  to  some  na- 
tures, either  to  body  or  mind,  and  when  at  night  we  all 
turned  in  at  ten  o'clock,  wet  through  —  for  it  had  rained 
in  the  evening  —  and  tired  out,  we  were  able  to  say  our 
prayers  with  just  as  light  hearts,  feeling  that  we  had  put 
sixty-eight  deer  aboard,  as  if  we  had  enjoyed  that  fore- 
taste of  what  some  still  believe  to  be  the  rest  of  heaven. 
Rest  for  our  souls  we  certainly  had,  and  to  some  of  us  that 
is  the  rest  which  God  calls  His  own  and  intends  shall  be 
ours  also.  When  later  I  spoke  to  some  young  men  about 
this,  it  seemed  to  them  a  Chestertonian  paradox,  that  we 
should  actually  hold  a  Sunday  service  and  then  go  forth 
to  render  it.  They  thought  that  Sunday  prayers  had  to 
do  only  with  the  escaping  the  consequences  of  one's  sins. 
I  still  believe  that  we  were  absolutely  right  in  our  the- 
ory of  the  introduction  of  the  deer  into  this  North  coun- 
try, and  that  we  shall  be  justified  in  it  by  posterity.  That 
these  thousands  of  miles,  now  useless  to  men,  will  be 
grazed  over  one  day  by  countless  herds  of  deer  affording 
milk,  meat,  clothing,  transport,  and  pleasure  to  the  hu- 
man race,  is  certain.  They  do  not  by  any  means  destroy 
the  land  over  which  they  rove.  On  the  contrary,  the  deep 
ruts  made  by  their  feet,  like  the  ponies'  feet  in  Iceland, 
serve  to  drain  the  surface  water  and  dry  the  land.  The 
kicking  and  pawing  of  the  moss-covered  ground  with  their 


THE  REINDEER  EXPERIMENT  303 

spade-like  feet  tear  it  up,  level  it,  and  cut  off  the  dense 
moss  and  creeping  plants,  bring  the  sub-soil  to  the  top, 
and  over  the  whole  the  big  herd  spreads  a  good  covering 
of  manure. 

Reinder-trodden  barrens,  after  a  short  rest,  yield  more 
grass  and  cattle  food  than  ever  before.  No  domesticated 
animal  can  tolerate  the  cold  of  this  country  and  find  sus- 
tenance for  itself  as  can  the  deer.  It  can  live  as  far  north 
as  the  musk-ox.  Peary  found  reindeer  in  plenty  on  the 
shores  of  the  polar  sea.  The  great  barren  lands  of  Canada, 
from  Hudson  Bay  north  of  Chesterfield  Inlet  away  to  the 
west,  carry  tens  of  thousands  of  wild  caribou.  Mr.  J.  B. 
Tyrrell's  photographs  show  armies  of  them  advancing; 
the  stags  with  their  lordly  horns  are  seen  passing  close  to 
the  camera  in  serried  ranks  that  seem  to  have  no  end. 

Our  own  experiment  is  far  from  being  a  failure.  It  has 
been  a  success,  even  if  only  the  corpse  is  left  in  Newfound- 
land. We  have  proved  conclusively  that  the  deer  can 
live,  thrive,  and  multiply  on  the  otherwise  perfectly 
valueless  areas  of  this  North  country,  and  furnish  a  rap- 
idly increasing  domesticated  "raw  material"  for  a  food 
and  clothing  supply  to  its  people. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  ICE-PAN  ADVENTURE 

On  Easter  Sunday,  the  21st  of  April,  1908,  it  was  still 
winter  with  us  in  northern  Newfoundland.  Everything 
was  covered  with  snow  and  ice.  I  was  returning  to  the  hos- 
pital after  morning  service,  when  a  boy  came  running 
over  with  the  news  that  a  large  team  of  dogs  had  come 
from  sixty  miles  to  the  southward  to  get  a  doctor  to  come 
at  once  on  an  urgent  case.  A  fortnight  before  we  had  op- 
erated on  a  young  man  for  acute  bone  disease  of  the 
thigh,  but  when  he  was  sent  home  the  people  had 
allowed  the  wound  to  close,  and  poisoned  matter  had 
accumulated.  As  it  seemed  probable  that  we  should  have 
to  remove  the  leg,  there  was  no  time  to  be  lost,  and  I 
therefore  started  immediately,  the  messengers  following 
me  with  their  team. 

My  dogs  were  especially  good  ones  and  had  pulled  me 
out  of  many  a  previous  scrape  by  their  sagacity  and  en- 
durance. Moody,  Watch,  Spy,  Doc,  Brin,  Jerry,  Sue,  and 
Jack  were  as  beautiful  beasts  as  ever  hauled  a  komatik 
over  our  Northern  barrens.  The  messengers  had  been 
anxious  that  their  team  should  travel  back  with  mine,  for 
their  animals  were  slow  at  best,  and  moreover  were  now 
tired  from  their  long  journey.  My  dogs,  however,  were  so 
powerful  that  it  was  impossible  to  hold  them  back,  and 
though  I  twice  managed  to  wait  for  the  following  sledge, 
I  had  reached  a  village  twenty  miles  to  the  south  and  had 
already  fed  my  team  when  the  others  caught  up. 

That  night  the  wind  came  in  from  sea,  bringing  with 
it  both  fog  and  rain,  softening  the  snow  and  making  the 
travelling  very  difficult.  Besides  this  a  heavy  sea  began 


A  SPRING  SCENE  AT  ST.  ANTHONY 


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DOG  RACE  AT  ST.  ANTHONY 


THE  ICE-PAN  ADVENTURE  305 

heaving  into  the  bay  on  the  shores  of  which  lay  the  little 
hamlet  where  I  spent  my  first  night.  Our  journey  the 
next  day  would  be  over  forty  miles,  the  first  ten  lying  on 
an  arm  of  the  sea. 

In  order  not  to  be  separated  too  long  from  my  friends  I 
sent  them  ahead  of  me  by  two  hours,  appointing  as  a 
rendezvous  the  log  tilt  on  the  other  side  of  the  bay.  As 
I  started  the  first  rain  of  the  year  began  to  fall,  and  I  was 
obliged  to  keep  on  what  we  call  the  "  ballicaters,"  or  ice 
barricades,  for  a  much  longer  distance  up  the  bay  than 
I  had  anticipated.  The  sea,  rolling  in  during  the  previous 
night,  had  smashed  the  ponderous  layer  of  surface  ice 
right  up  to  the  landwash.  Between  the  huge  ice-pans  were 
gaping  chasms,  while  half  a  mile  out  all  was  clear  water. 

Three  miles  from  the  shore  is  a  small  island  situated  in 
the  middle  of  the  bay.  This  had  preserved  an  ice  bridge, 
so  that  by  crossing  a  few  cracks  I  managed  to  get  to  it 
safely.  From  that  point  it  was  only  four  miles  to  the  oppo- 
site shore,  a  saving  of  several  miles  if  one  could  make  it, 
instead  of  following  the  landwash  round  the  bay.  Al- 
though the  ice  looked  rough,  it  seemed  good,  though  one 
could  see  that  it  had  been  smashed  up  by  the  incoming 
sea  and  packed  in  tight  again  by  the  easterly  wind.  There- 
fore, without  giving  the  matter  a  second  thought,  I  flung 
myself  on  the  komatik  and  the  dogs  started  for  the  rocky 
promontory  some  four  miles  distant. 

All  went  well  till  we  were  within  about  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  of  our  objective  point.  Then  the  wind  dropped  sud- 
denly, and  I  noticed  simultaneously  that  we  were  travel- 
ling over  "sish"  ice.  By  stabbing  down  with  my  whip- 
handle  I  could  drive  it  through  the  thin  coating  of  young 
ice  which  had  formed  on  the  surface.  "Sish"  ice  is  made 
up  of  tiny  bits  formed  by  the  pounding  together  of  the 
large  pans  by  the  heavy  seas.  So  quickly  had  the  wind 


306  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

veered  and  come  offshore,  and  so  rapidly  did  the  packed 
slob,  relieved  of  the  inward  pressure  of  the  easterly 
breeze,  "run  abroad,"  that  already  I  could  not  see  any 
pan  larger  than  ten  feet  square.  The  whole  field  of  ice 
was  loosening  so  rapidly  that  no  retreat  was  possible. 

There  was  not  a  moment  to  lose.  I  dragged  off  my  oil- 
skins and  threw  myseff  on  my  hands  and  knees  beside  the 
komatik  so  as  to  give  a  larger  base  to  hold,  shouting  at 
the  same  time  to  my  team  to  make  a  dash  for  the  shore. 
We  had  not  gone  twenty  yards  when  the  dogs  scented 
danger  and  hesitated,  and  the  komatik  sank  instantly 
into  the  soft  slob.  Thus  the  dogs  had  to  pull  much  harder, 
causing  them  to  sink  also. 

It  flashed  across  my  mind  that  earlier  in  the  year  a  man 
had  been  drowned  in  this  same  way  by  his  team  tangling 
their  traces  around  him  in  the  slob.  I  loosened  my  sheath- 
knife,  scrambled  forward  and  cut  the  traces,  retaining 
the  leader's  trace  wound  securely  round  my  wrist. 

As  I  was  in  the  water  I  could  not  discern  anything  that 
would  bear  us  up,  but  I  noticed  that  my  leading  dog  was 
wallowing  about  near  a  piece  of  snow,  packed  and  frozen 
together  like  a  huge  snowball,  some  twenty-five  yards 
away.  Upon  this  he  had  managed  to  scramble.  He  shook 
the  ice  and  water  from  his  shaggy  coat  and  turned  around 
to  look  for  me.  Perched  up  there  out  of  the  frigid  water 
he  seemed  to  think  the  situation  the  most  natural  in  the 
world,  and  the  weird  black  marking  of  his  face  made  him 
appear  to  be  grinning  with  satisfaction.  The  rest  of  us 
were  bogged  like  flies  in  treacle. 

GraduaUy  I  succeeded  in  hauling  myself  along  by  the 
line  which  was  still  attached  to  my  wrist,  and  was  nearly 
up  to  the  snow-raft,  when  the  leader  turned  adroitly 
round,  slipped  out  of  his  harness,  and  once  more  leered 
at  me  with  his  grinning  face. 


THE  ICE-PAN  ADVENTURE  307 

There  seemed  nothing  to  be  done,  and  I  was  beginning 
to  feel  drowsy  with  the  cold,  when  I  noticed  the  trace  of 
another  dog  near  by.  He  had  fallen  through  close  to  the 
pan,  and  was  now  unable  to  force  his  way  out.  Along  his 
line  I  hauled  myself,  using  him  as  a  kind  of  bow  anchor  — 
and  I  soon  lay,  with  my  dogs  around  me,  on  the  little 
island  of  slob  ice. 

The  piece  of  frozen  snow  on  which  we  lay  was  so  small 
that  it  was  evident  we  must  all  be  drowned  if  we  were 
forced  to  remain  on  it  as  it  was  driven  seaward  into  open 
water.  Twenty  yards  away  was  a  larger  and  firmer  pan 
floating  in  the  sish,  and  if  we  could  reach  it  I  felt  that  we 
might  postpone  for  a  time  the  death  which  seemed  ines- 
capable. To  my  great  satisfaction  I  now  found  that  my 
hunting  knife  was  still  tied  on  to  the  back  of  one  of  the 
dogs,  where  I  had  attached  it  when  we  first  fell  through. 
Soon  the  sealskin  traces  hanging  on  the  dogs'  harnesses 
were  cut  and  spliced  together  to  form  one  long  line.  I  di- 
vided this  and  fastened  the  ends  to  the  backs  of  my  two 
leaders,  attaching  the  two  other  ends  to  my  own  wrists. 
My  long  sealskin  boots,  reaching  to  my  hips,  were  full  of 
ice  and  water,  and  I  took  them  off  and  tied  them  sepa- 
rately on  the  dogs'  backs.  I  had  already  lost  my  coat,  cap, 
gloves,  and  overalls. 

Nothing  seemed  to  be  able  to  induce  the  dogs  to  move, 
even  though  I  kept  throwing  them  off  the  ice  into  the 
water.  Perhaps  it  was  only  natural  that  they  should  strug- 
gle back,  for  once  in  the  water  they  could  see  no  other  pan 
to  which  to  swim.  It  flashed  into  my  mind  that  my  small 
black  spaniel  which  was  with  me  was  as  light  as  a  feather 
and  could  get  across  with  no  diflSculty.  I  showed  him  the 
direction  and  then  flung  a  bit  of  ice  toward  the  desired 
goal.  Without  a  second's  hesitation  he  made  a  dash  and 
reached  the  pan  safely,  as  the  tough  layer  of  sea  ice  easily 


308  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

carried  his  weight.  As  he  lay  on  the  white  surface  looking 
like  a  round  black  fuss  ball,  my  leaders  could  plainly 
see  him.  They  now  understood  what  I  wanted  and  fought 
their  way  bravely  toward  the  little  retriever,  carrying 
with  them  the  line  that  gave  me  yet  another  chance  for 
my  life.  The  other  dogs  followed  them,  and  all  but  one 
succeeded  in  getting  out  on  the  new  haven  of  refuge. 

Taking  all  the  run  that  the  length  of  my  little  pan  would 
afford,  I  made  a  dive,  slithering  along  the  surface  as  far 
as  possible  before  I  once  again  fell  through.  This  time  I 
had  taken  the  precaution  to  tie  the  harnesses  under  the 
dogs'  bellies  so  that  they  could  not  slip  them  off,  and  after 
a  long  fight  I  was  able  to  drag  myself  onto  the  new  pan. 

Though  we  had  been  working  all  the  while  toward  the 
shore,  the  offshore  wind  had  driven  us  a  hundred  yards 
farther  seaward.  On  closer  examination  I  found  that  the 
pan  on  which  we  were  resting  was  not  ice  at  all,  but  snow- 
covered  slob,  frozen  into  a  mass  which  would  certainly 
eventually  break  up  in  the  heavy  sea,  which  was  mo- 
mentarily increasing  as  the  ice  drove  offshore  before  the 
wind.  The  westerly  wind  kept  on  rising  —  a  bitter  blast 
with  us  in  winter,  coming  as  it  does  over  the  Gulf  ice. 

Some  yards  away  I  could  still  see  my  komatik  with 
my  thermos  bottle  and  warm  clothing  on  it,  as  well  as 
matches  and  wood.  In  the  memory  of  the  oldest  inhab- 
itant no  one  had  ever  been  adrift  on  the  ice  in  this  bay, 
and  unless  the  team  which  had  gone  ahead  should  happen 
to  come  back  to  look  for  me,  there  was  not  one  chance  in 
a  thousand  of  my  being  seen. 

To  protect  myself  from  freezing  I  now  cut  down  my 
long  boots  as  far  as  the  feet,  and  made  a  kind  of  jacket, 
which  shielded  my  back  from  the  rising  wind. 

By  midday  I  had  passed  the  island  to  which  I  had 
crossed  on  the  ice  bridge.  The  bridge  was  gone,  so  that  if 


THE  ICE-PAN  ADVENTURE  809 

I  did  succeed  in  reaching  that  island  I  should  only  be 
marooned  there  and  die  of  starvation.  Five  miles  away  to 
the  north  side  of  the  bay  the  immense  pans  of  Arctic  ice 
were  surging  to  and  fro  in  the  ground  seas  and  thunder- 
ing against  the  cliffs.  No  boat  could  have  lived  through 
such  surf,  even  if  I  had  been  seen  from  that  quarter. 
Though  it  was  hardly  safe  to  move  about  on  my  little 
pan,  I  saw  that  I  must  have  the  skins  of  some  of  my  dogs, 
if  I  were  to  live  the  night  out  without  freezing.  With  some 
difficulty  I  now  succeeded  in  killing  three  of  my  dogs  — 
and  I  envied  those  dead  beasts  whose  troubles  were  over 
so  quickly.  I  questioned  if,  once  I  passed  into  the  open 
sea,  it  would  not  be  better  to  use  my  trusty  knife  on  my- 
self than  to  die  by  inches. 

But  the  necessity  for  work  saved  me  from  undue  philos- 
ophizing; and  night  found  me  ten  miles  on  my  sea- 
ward voyage,  with  the  three  dogs  skinned  and  their  fur 
wrapped  around  me  as  a  coat.  I  also  frayed  a  small  piece 
of  rope  into  oakum  and  mixed  it  with  the  fat  from  the 
intestines  of  my  dogs.  But,  alas,  I  found  that  the  matches 
in  my  box,  which  was  always  chained  to  me,  were  soaked 
to  a  pulp  and  quite  useless.  Had  I  been  able  to  make  a  fire 
out  there  at  sea,  it  would  have  looked  so  uncanny  that 
I  felt  sure  that  the  fishermen  friends,  whose  tiny  light 
I  could  just  discern  twinkling  away  in  the  bay,  would  see 
it.  The  carcasses  of  my  dogs  I  piled  up  to  make  a  wind- 
break, and  at  intervals  I  took  off  my  clothes,  wrung  them 
out,  swung  them  in  the  wind,  and  put  on  first  one  and 
then  the  other  inside,  hoping  that  the  heat  of  my  body 
would  thus  dry  them.  My  feet  gave  me  the  most  trouble, 
as  the  moccasins  were  so  easily  soaked  through  in  the 
snow.  But  I  remembered  the  way  in  which  the  Lapps  who 
tended  our  reindeer  carried  grass  with  them,  to  use  in 
their  boots  in  place  of  dry  socks.  As  soon  as  I  could  sit 


SIO  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

down  I  began  to  unravel  the  ropes  from  the  dogs'  har- 
nesses, and  although  by  this  time  my  fingers  were  more 
or  less  frozen,  I  managed  to  stuff  the  oakum  into  my 
shoes. 

Shortly  before  I  had  opened  a  box  containing  some  old 
football  clothes  which  I  had  not  seen  for  twenty  years. 
I  was  wearing  this  costume  at  the  time;  and  though  my 
cap,  coat,  and  gloves  were  gone,  as  I  stood  there  in  a 
pair  of  my  old  Oxford  University  running  shorts,  and 
red,  yellow,  and  black  Richmond  football  stockings,  and 
a  flannel  shirt,  I  remembered  involuntarily  the  little  dying 
girl  who  asked  to  be  dressed  in  her  Sunday  frock  so  that 
she  might  arrive  in  heaven  properly  attired. 

Forcing  my  biggest  dog  to  lie  down,  I  cuddled  up  close 
to  him,  drew  the  improvised  dogskin  rug  over  me,  and 
proceeded  to  go  to  sleep.  One  hand  being  against  the  dog 
was  warm,  but  the  other  was  frozen,  and  about  midnight 
I  woke  up  shivering  enough,  so  I  thought,  to  shatter  my 
frail  pan  to  atoms.  The  moon  was  just  rising,  and  the 
wind  was  steadily  driving  me  toward  the  open  sea.  Sud- 
denly what  seemed  a  miracle  happened,  for  the  wind 
veered,  then  dropped  away  entirely  leaving  it  flat  calm. 
I  turned  over  and  fell  asleep  again.  I  was  next  awakened 
by  the  sudden  and  persistent  thought  that  I  must  have  a 
flag,  and  accordingly  set  to  work  to  disarticulate  the 
frozen  legs  of  my  dead  dogs.  Cold  as  it  was  I  determined 
to  sacrifice  my  shirt  to  top  this  rude  flagpole  as  soon  as 
the  daylight  came.  When  the  legs  were  at  last  tied  to- 
gether with  bits  of  old  harness  rope,  they  made  the  crook- 
edest  flagstaff  that  it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to  see.  Though 
with  the  rising  of  the  sun  the  frost  came  out  of  the  dogs* 
legs  to  some  extent,  and  the  friction  of  waving  it  made  the 
odd  pole  almost  tie  itself  in  knots,  I  could  raise  it  three 
or  four  feet  above  my  head,  which  was  very  important. 


THE  ICE-PAN  ADVENTURE  311 

Once  or  twice  I  thought  that  I  could  distinguish  men 
against  the  distant  cliffs  —  for  I  had  drifted  out  of  the 
bay  into  the  sea —  but  the  objects  turned  out  to  be  trees. 
Once  also  I  thought  that  I  saw  a  boat  appearing  and  dis- 
appearing on  the  surface  of  the  water,  but  it  proved  to  be 
only  a  small  piece  of  ice  bobbing  up  and  down.  The  rock- 
ing of  my  cradle  on  the  waves  had  helped  me  to  sleep,  and 
I  felt  as  well  as  I  ever  did  in  my  life.  I  was  confident  that 
I  could  last  another  twenty-four  hours  if  my  boat  would 
only  hold  out  and  not  rot  under  the  sun's  rays.  I  could 
not  help  laughing  at  my  position,  standing  hour  after 
hour  waving  my  shirt  at  those  barren  and  lonely  cliffs; 
but  I  can  honestly  say  that  from  first  to  last  not  a  single 
sensation  of  fear  crossed  my  mind. 

My  own  faith  in  the  mystery  of  immortality  is  so  un- 
troubled that  it  now  seemed  almost  natural  to  be  passing 
to  the  portal  of  death  from  an  ice-pan.  Quite  unbidden, 
the  words  of  the  old  hymn  kept  running  through  my  head : 

"My  God,  my  Father,  while  I  stray 
Far  from  my  home  on  life's  rough  way. 
Oh,  help  me  from  my  heart  to  say. 
Thy  will  be  done." 

I  had  laid  my  wooden  matches  out  to  dry  and  was 
searching  about  on  the  pan  for  a  piece  of  transparent  ice 
which  I  could  use  as  a  burning-glass.  I  thought  that  I 
could  make  smoke  enough  to  be  seen  from  the  land  if  only 
I  could  get  some  sort  of  a  light.  All  at  once  I  seemed  to 
see  the  glitter  of  an  oar,  but  I  gave  up  the  idea  because 
I  remembered  that  it  was  not  water  which  lay  between 
me  and  the  land,  but  slob  ice,  and  even  if  people  had  seen 
me,  I  did  not  imagine  that  they  could  force  a  boat 
through.  The  next  time  that  I  went  back  to  my  flag- 
waving,  however,  the  glitter  was  very  distinct,  but  my 
snow-glasses  having  been  lost,  I  was  partially  snow-blind 


312  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  distrusted  my  vision.  But  at  last,  besides  the  glide 
of  an  oar  I  made  out  the  black  streak  of  a  boat's  hull,  and 
knew  that  if  the  pan  held  out  for  another  hour  I  should  be 
all  right.  The  boat  drew  nearer  and  nearer,  and  I  could 
make  out  my  rescuers  frantically  waving.  When  they  got 
close  by  they  shouted,  "Don't  get  excited.  Keep  on  the 
pan  where  you  are."  They  were  far  more  excited  than  I, 
and  had  they  only  known  as  I  did  the  sensations  of  a  bath 
in  the  icy  water,  without  the  chance  of  drying  one's  self 
afterwards,  they  would  not  have  expected  me  to  wish  to 
follow  the  example  of  the  Apostle  Peter. 

As  the  first  man  leaped  on  my  pan  and  grasped  my 
hand,  not  a  word  was  spoken,  but  I  could  see  the  emo- 
tions which  he  was  trying  to  force  back.  A  swallow  of  the 
hot  tea  which  had  been  thoughtfully  sent  out  in  a  bottle, 
the  dogs  hoisted  on  board,  and  we  started  for  home,  now 
forging  along  in  open  water,  now  pushing  the  pans  apart 
with  the  oars,  and  now  jumping  out  on  the  ice  and  haul- 
ing the  boat  over  the  pans. 

It  seems  that  the  night  before  four  men  had  been  out 
on  the  headland  cutting  up  some  seals  which  they  had 
killed  in  the  fall.  As  they  were  leaving  for  home,  my  ice- 
raft  must  have  drifted  clear  of  Hare  Island,  and  one  of 
them,  with  his  keen  fisherman's  eyes,  had  detected  some- 
thing unusual  on  the  ice.  They  at  once  returned  to  their 
village,  saying  that  something  living  was  adrift  on  the 
floe.  The  one  man  on  that  section  of  coast  who  owned  a 
good  spy-glass  jumped  up  from  his  supper  on  hearing  the 
news  and  hurried  over  to  the  lookout  on  the  cliffs.  Dusk 
though  it  was,  he  saw  that  a  man  was  out  on  the  ice,  and 
noticed  him  every  now  and  again  waving  his  hands  at  the 
shore.  He  immediately  surmised  who  it  must  be;  so  little 
as  I  thought  it,  when  night  was  closing  in  the  men  at  the 
village  were  trying  to  launch  a  boat.  Miles  of  ice  lay  be- 


THE  ICE-PAN  ADVENTURE  313 

tween  them  and  me,  and  the  angry  sea  was  hurHng  great 
blocks  against  the  land.  While  I  had  considered  myself  a 
laughing-stock,  bowing  with  my  flag  at  those  unrespon- 
sive cliffs,  many  eyes  were  watching  me. 

By  daybreak  a  fine  volunteer  crew  had  been  organized, 
and  the  boat,  with  such  a  force  behind  it,  would,  I  believe, 
have  gone  through  anything.  After  seeing  the  heavy 
breakers  through  which  we  were  guided,  as  at  last  we  ran 
in  at  the  harbour  mouth,  I  knew  well  what  the  wives  of 
that  crew  had  been  thinking  when  they  saw  their  loved 
ones  depart  on  such  an  errand. 

Every  soul  in  the  village  was  waiting  to  shake  hands  as 
I  landed;  and  even  with  the  grip  that  one  after  another 
gave  me,  I  did  not  find  out  that  my  hands  were  badly 
f rostburnt  —  a  fact  which  I  have  realized  since,  however. 
I  must  have  looked  a  weird  object  as  I  stepped  ashore, 
tied  up  in  rags,  stuffed  out  with  oakum,  and  wrapped  in 
the  bloody  dogskins. 

The  news  had  gone  over  to  the  hospital  that  I  was  lost, 
so  I  at  once  started  north  for  St.  Anthony,  though  I  must 
confess  that  I  did  not  greatly  enjoy  the  trip,  as  I  had  to 
be  hauled  like  a  log,  my  feet  being  so^frozen  that  I  could 
not  walk.  For  a  few  days  subsequently  I  had  painful  re- 
minders of  the  adventure  in  my  frozen  hands  and  feet, 
which  forced  me  to  keep  to  my  bed  —  an  unwelcome  and 
unusual  interlude  in  my  way  of  life. 
In  our  hallway  stands  a  bronze  tablet: 
"To  the  Memory  of 

Three  Noble  Dogs 

Moody 

Watch 

Spy 

Whose  lives  were  given 

For  mine  on  the  ice 

April  21st,  1908." 


314  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

The  boy  whose  life  I  was  intent  on  saving  was  brought 
to  the  hospital  a  day  or  so  later  in  a  boat,  the  ice  having 
cleared  off  the  coast  temporarily;  and  he  was  soon  on  the 
highroad  to  recovery. 

We  all  love  life,  and  I  was  glad  to  have  a  new  lease  of 
it  before  me.  As  I  went  to  sleep  that  night  there  still  rang 
through  my  ears  the  same  verse  of  the  old  hymn  which 
had  been  my  companion  on  the  ice-pan: 

"Oh,  help  me  from  my  heart  to  say. 
Thy  wUl  be  done.". 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THEY  THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS 

Contrary  to  her  ungenerous  reputation,  even  if  vessels 
are  lost  on  the  Labrador,  her  almost  unequalled  series  of 
harbours  —  so  that  from  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle  to  those 
of  Hudson  Bay  there  is  not  ten  miles  of  coast  anywhere 
without  one  —  enables  the  crew  to  escape  nearly  every 
time. 

In  1883,  in  the  North  Sea  in  October,  a  hurricane  de- 
stroyed twenty-five  of  our  stout  vessels  on  the  Dogger 
Bank,  cost  us  two  hundred  and  seventy  good  lives,  and 
left  a  hundred  widows  to  mourn  on  the  land.  In  1889  a 
storm  hit  the  north  coast  of  Newfoundland,  but  too  late 
in  the  season  to  injure  much  of  the  fishing  fleet,  which  had 
for  the  most  part  gone  South.  But  it  caused  immense 
damage  to  property  and  the  loss  of  a  few  lives.  As  one  of 
the  testimonials  to  its  fury,  I  saw  the  flooring  and  seats 
of  the  church  in  the  mud  of  the  harbour  at  St.  Anthony 
at  low  tide  even  though  that  church  had  been  founded 
entirely  on  a  rock.  We  now  concede  that  it  is  good  econ- 
omy on  our  coast  to  have  wire  stays  to  ringbolts  leaded 
into  rocky  foundations,  to  anchor  small  buildings.  Our 
storms  are  mostly  cyclones  with  wide  vortices,  and  coming 
largely  from  the  southwest  or  northwest,  are  offshore,  and 
therefore  less  felt. 

We  were  once  running  along  at  full  speed  in  a  very 
thick  fog,  framing  a  course  to  just  clear  some  nasty 
shoals  on  our  port  bow.  There  was  nothing  outside  us  and 
we  had  seen  no  ice  of  late,  so  I  went  below  for  some  lunch, 
telling  the  mate  to  report  land  as  soon  as  he  saw  any,  and 
instructing  the  man  at  the  wheel,  if  he  heard  a  shout,  to 


316  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

port  his  helm  hard.  The  soup  was  still  on  the  table  when 
a  loud  shouting  made  us  leap  on  the  deck  to  see  the  ship 
going  full  tilt  into  an  enormous  iceberg,  which  seemed 
right  at  the  end  of  the  bowsprit.  This  unexpected  monster 
was  on  our  starboard  bow,  and  the  order  to  avoid  the 
shoal  was  putting  us  headfirst  into  it.  Our  only  chance 
was  full  speed  and  a  starboard  helm,  and  we  actually 
grazed  along  the  side  of  the  berg.  It  seemed  almost  ludi- 
crous later  to  pick  up  a  large  island  and  run  into  a  har- 
bour with  grassy,  sloping  sides,  out  of  which  the  fog  was 
shut  like  a  wall,  and  then  to  go  ashore  and  bargain  over 
buying  a  couple  of  cows,  which  were  being  sold,  as  the 
settler  was  moving  to  the  mainland. 

Among  the  records  of  events  of  importance  to  us  I  find 
in  1908  that  of  the  second  real  hurricane  which  I  have 
ever  seen.  It  began  on  Saturday,  July  28,  the  height  of 
our  summer,  with  flat  calm  and  sunshine  alternating  with 
small,  fierce  squalls.  Though  we  had  a  falling  barometer, 
this  deceived  us,  and  we  anchored  that  evening  in  a  shal- 
low and  unsafe  open  roadstead  about  twenty  miles  from 
Indian  Harbour  Hospital.  Fortunately  our  suspicions 
induced  us  to  keep  an  anchor  watch,  and  his  warning 
made  us  get  steam  at  midnight,  and  we  brought  up  at 
daylight  in  the  excellent  narrow  harbour  in  which  the 
hospital  stands.  The  holding  ground  there  is  deep  mud  in 
four  fathoms  of  water,  the  best  possible  for  us.  Our  only 
trouble  was  that  the  heavy  tidal  current  would  swing  a 
ship  uneasily  broadside  against  an  average  wind  force. 

It  was  blowing  so  strongly  by  this  time  that  the  hospi- 
tal yawl  Daryl  had  already  been  driven  ashore  from  her 
anchors,  but  still  we  were  able  to  keep  ours  in  the  water, 
and  getting  a  line  to  her,  to  heave  her  astern  of  our  vessel 
with  our  powerful  winch.  The  fury  of  the  breeze  grew 
worse  as  the  day  went  on.  All  the  fishing  boats  in  the  har- 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS    317 

hour  filled  and  sank  with  the  driving  water.  With  the 
increase  of  violence  of  the  weather  we  got  up  steam  and 
steamed  to  our  anchors  to  ease  if  possible  the  strain  on 
our  two  chains  and  shore  lines  —  a  web  which  we  had 
been  able  to  weave  before  it  was  too  late.  By  Sunday  the 
gale  had  blown  itself  entirely  away,  and  Monday  morn- 
ing broke  flat  calm,  with  lovely  sunshine,  and  only  an 
enormous  sullen  ground  sea.  This  is  no  uncommon  game 
of  Dame  Nature's;  she  seemed  to  be  only  mocking  at  the 
destruction  which  she  had  wrought. 

Knowing  that  there  must  be  many  comrades  in  trouble, 
we  were  early  away,  and  dancing  like  a  bubble,  we  ran 
north,  keeping  as  close  inshore  as  we  could,  and  watch- 
ing the  coast-line  with  our  glasses.  The  coast  was  littered 
with  remains.  Forty-one  vessels  had  been  lost;  in  one 
uninhabited  roadstead  alone,  some  forty  miles  away  from 
Indian  Harbour,  lay  sixteen  wrecks.  The  shore  here  was 
lined  with  rude  shelters  made  from  the  wreckage  of  spars 
and  sails,  and  the  women  were  busy  cooking  meals  and 
"  tidying  up  "  the  shacks  as  if  they  had  lived  there  always. 

We  soon  set  to  work  hauling  off  such  vessels  as  would 
float.  One,  a  large  hardwood,  well-fastened  hull,  we  de- 
termined to  save.  Her  name  was  Pendragon.  The  owner 
was  aboard  —  a  young  man  with  no  experience  who  had 
never  previously  owned  a  vessel.  He  was  so  appalled  at 
the  disaster  that  he  decided  to  have  her  sold  piecemeal 
and  broken  up.  We  attended  the  auction  on  the  beach  and 
bought  each  piece  as  it  came  to  the  hammer.  Getting  her 
ofiE  was  the  trouble.  We  adopted  tactics  of  our  own  in- 
vention. Mousing  together  the  two  mastheads  with  a 
bight  of  rope,  we  put  on  it  a  large  whoop  traveller,  and 
to  that  fastened  our  stoutest  and  longest  line.  Then  first 
backing  down  to  her  on  the  very  top  of  high  water,  we 
went  "full  speed  ahead."  Over  she  fell  on  her  side  and 


318  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

bumped  along  on  the  mud  and  shingle  for  a  few  yards. 
By  repeated  jerks  she  was  eventually  ours,  but  leaking 
so  like  a  basket  that  we  feared  we  should  yet  lose  her. 
Pumps  inside  fortunately  kept  her  free  till  we  passed  her 
topsail  under  her,  and  after  dropping  in  sods  and  peat,  we 
let  the  pressure  from  the  outside  keep  them  in  place. 
When  night  fell  I  was  played  out,  and  told  the  crew  they 
must  let  her  sink.  My  two  volunteer  helpers,  Albert 
Gould,  of  Bowdoin,  and  Paul  Matheson,  of  Brown,  how- 
ever, volunteered  to  pump  all  night. 

While  hunting  for  a  crew  to  take  her  South  we  came 
upon  the  wreck  of  a  brand-new  boat,  only  launched  two 
months  previously.  She  had  been  the  pride  of  the  skip- 
per's life.  He  was  an  old  friend  of  mine,  and  we  felt  so 
sorry  for  him  that  we  not  only  got  him  to  take  our  vessel, 
but  we  handed  it  over  for  him  to  work  out  at  the  cost 
which  we  had  paid  for  the  pieces.  He  made  a  good  living 
out  of  her  for  several  years,  but  later  she  was  lost  with 
all  hands  on  some  dangerous  shoals  near  St.  Anthony  on 
a  journey  North. 

With  fifty-odd  people  aboard,  and  a  long  trail  of  nine- 
teen fishing  boats  we  eventually  got  back  to  Indian  Har- 
bour, where  every  one  joined  in  helping  our  friends  in 
misfortune  till  the  steamer  came  and  took  them  South. 
They  waved  us  farewell,  and,  quite  undismayed,  wished 
for  better  luck  for  themselves  another  season. 

The  case  of  one  skipper  is  well  worth  relating  as  show- 
ing their  admirable  optimism.  He  was  sixty-seven  years 
old,  and  had  by  hard  saving  earned  his  own  schooner  — 
a  fine  large  vessel.  He  had  arranged  to  sell  her  on  his  re- 
turn trip  and  live  quietly  on  the  proceeds  on  his  potato 
patch  in  southern  Newfoundland.  His  vessel  had  driven 
on  a  submerged  reef  and  turned  turtle.  The  crew  had 
jumped  for  their  lives,  not  even  saving  their  personal 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  m  GREAT  WATERS   319 

clothing,  watches,  or  instruments.  We  photographed  the 
remains  of  the  capsized  hull  floating  on  the  surf.  Yet  this 
man,  in  the  four  days  during  which  he  was  my  guest, 
never  once  uttered  a  word  of  complaint.  He  had  done  all 
he  could,  and  he  "  'lowed  that  t'  Lord  knew  better  than 
he  what  was  best." 

"But  what  will  you  do  now.  Skipper.'*"  I  asked. 

"Why,  get  another,"  he  repHed;  "I  think  them '11  trust 
me." 

One  of  our  older  vessels  started  a  plank  in  a  gale  of 
wind  in  the  Atlantic  and  went  to  the  bottom  without 
warning.  In  an  open  boat  for  six  days  with  only  a  little 
dry  bread  and  no  covering  of  any  sort,  the  crew  fought 
rough  seas  and  heavy  breezes.  But  they  handled  her  with 
the  sea  genius  of  our  race;  made  land  safely  at  last,  and 
never  said  a  word  about  the  incident.  On  another  occa- 
sion two  men,  who  had  been  a  fortnight  adrift,  had  rowed 
one  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  and  had  only  the  smallest 
modicum  of  food,  came  aboard  our  vessel.  When  I  said, 
"You  are  hungry,  aren't  you?"  they  merely  replied, 
"Well,  not  over-much"  — and  only  laughed  when  I  sug- 
gested that  perhaps  a  month  in  the  open  boat  might  have 
given  them  a  real  appetite. 

One  October,  south  of  St.  Anthony,  we  were  lying  in 
the  arm  of  a  bay  with  two  anchors  and  two  warps 
out,  one  to  each  side  of  the  narrow  channel.  The  wind 
piled  up  the  waters,  much  as  it  did  in  Pharaoh's  day.  We 
were  flung  astern  yard  by  yard  on  the  top  of  the  seas, 
and  when  it  was  obvious  that  we  must  go  ashore,  we 
reversed  our  engines,  slipped  our  line,  and  drove  up  high 
and  dry  to  escape  the  bumping  on  the  beach  which 
was  inevitable.  There  we  lay  for  days.  Meanwhile  I 
had  taken  our  launch  into  the  river-mouth  and  was 
marooned  there.  For  the  launch  blew  right  up  on  the 


320  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

bank  in  among  the  trees,  and  strive  as  we  would,  for 
days  we  could  not  even  move  her  out  again. 

Another  spring  we  had  a  very  close  squeak  of  losing 
the  Strathcona.  While  we  were  trying  one  morning  to  get 
out  of  a  harbour,  a  sudden  gale  of  wind  came  down  upon 
us  and  pinned  us  tight,  so  that  we  could  not  move  an  inch. 
The  pressure  of  the  ice  became  more  severe  moment  by 
moment,  and  meanwhile  the  ice  between  us  and  the  shore 
seemed  to  be  imperceptibly  melting  away.  Naturally  we 
tried  every  expedient  we  could  think  of  to  keep  enough 
ice  between  us  and  the  shore  rocks  to  save  the  vessel  be- 
ing swept  over  the  rocky  headland,  toward  which  the 
irresistible  tidal  current  was  steadily  forcing  us.  To  make 
matters  worse,  we  struck  our  propeller  against  a  pan  of 
ice  and  broke  off  one  of  the  flanges  close  to  the  shaft.  It 
became  breathlessly  exciting  as  the  ship  drew  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  rocks.  We  abandoned  our  boat  when  we 
saw  that  by  trying  to  hold  on  to  it  any  longer  we  should 
be  jeopardizing  the  steamer.  Twisting  round  helplessly 
as  in  a  giant's  arms,  we  were  swept  past  the  dangerous 
promontory  and  to  our  infinite  joy  carried  out  into  the 
open  Atlantic  where  there  is  room  for  all.  Our  boat  was 
subsequently  rescued  from  the  shore,  and  we  were  able 
to  screw  on  a  new  blade  to  the  propeller. 

Just  after  the  big  gale  in  1908  His  Excellency,  Sir  Wil- 
liam MacGregor,  then  Governor,  was  good  enough  to 
come  and  spend  a  short  time  surveying  on  our  north 
coast.  He  was  an  expert  in  this  line,  as  well  as  being  a 
gold-medallist  in  medicine.  Later  he  changed  over  from 
the  Strathcona  to  the  Government  steamer  Fiona.  I 
acted  as  pilot  among  other  capacities  on  that  journey, 
and  was  unlucky  enough  to  run  her  full  tilt  onto  one  of 
the  only  sandbanks  on  the  coast  in  a  narrow  passage  be- 
tween some  islands  and  the  mainland !  The  Httle  Strath- 


ICEBERGS 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS  321 

cona,  following  behind,  was  in  time  to  haul  us  off  again, 
but  the  incident  made  the  captain  naturally  distrust  my 
ability,  and  as  a  result  he  would  not  approach  the  shore 
near  enough  for  us  to  get  the  observations  which  we 
needed.  Although  we  went  round  Cape  Chidley  into  Un- 
gava  Bay  I  could  not  regain  his  confidence  sufficiently  to 
go  through  the  straits  which  I  had  myself  sounded  and 
surveyed.  So  we  accomplished  it  in  a  small  boat,  getting 
good  observations.  Our  best  work,  however,  was  done 
when  His  Excellency  was  content  to  be  our  guest.  The 
hospital  on  board  was  used  for  the  necessary  instruments 
—  four  chronometers,  two  theodolites,  guns,  telescopes, 
camp  furniture,  and  piles  of  books  and  printed  forms. 
Mr.  Albert  Gould  of  Bowdoin  was  my  secretary  on  board 
that  year,  and  was  of  very  great  value  to  us. 

Though  the  work  of  an  amateur,  Sir  William's  survey- 
ing was  accepted  by  the  Admiralty  and  the  Royal  Geo- 
graphical Society  —  his  survey  in  Nigeria  having  proved 
to  have  not  one  single  location  a  mile  out  of  place  when 
an  official  survey  was  run  later. 

Many  a  time  in  the  middle  of  a  meal,  some  desired  but 
unlucky  star  would  cross  the  prime  vertical,  and  all  hands 
had  to  go  up  on  deck  and  shiver  while  rows  of  figures  were 
accumulated.  Sir  William  told  us  that  he  would  rather 
shoot  a  star  any  time  than  all  the  game  ever  hunted. 
One  night  my  secretary,  after  sitting  on  a  rock  at  a  mov- 
able table  from  5  P.M.  till  midnight,  came  in,  his  joints 
almost  creaking  with  cold,  and  loaded  with  a  pile  of  fig- 
ures which  he  assured  us  would  crush  the  life  out  of  most 
men.  My  mate  that  year  was  a  stout  and  very  short, 
plethoric  person.  When  he  stated  that  he  preferred  sur- 
veying to  fishing,  as  it  was  going  to  benefit  others  so 
much,  and  that  he  was  familiar  with  the  joys  of  service,  he 
was  taken  promptly  at  his  word.  It  was  a  hot  summer. 


322  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

The  theodolite  was  a  nine-inch  one  and  weighed  many 
pounds.  We  had  climbed  the  face  of  a  very  steep  moun- 
tain called  Cape  Mugford,  some  three  thousand  feet  high 
—  every  inch  of  which  distance  we  had  to  mount  from 
dead  sea-level.  When  at  last  Israel  arrived  on  the  sum- 
mit, he  looked  worried.  He  said  that  he  had  always 
thought  surveying  meant  letting  things  drop  down  over 
the  ship's  side,  and  not  carrying  ballast  up  precipices.  For 
his  part  he  could  now  see  that  providing  food  for  the 
world  was  good  enough  for  him.  He  distinctly  failed  to 
grasp  where  the  joy  of  this  kind  of  service  came  in  —  and 
noting  his  condition  as  he  lay  on  the  ground  and  panted 
I  decided  to  let  it  go  at  that. 

The  Governor  was  a  real  MacGregor  and  a  Presby- 
terian, and  was  therefore  quite  a  believer  in  keeping  Sun- 
day as  a  day  of  rest.  But  after  morning  prayers  on  the  first 
fine  day,  after  nearly  a  week  of  fog,  he  decided  that  he 
had  had  physical  rest  enough,  and  to  get  good  observa- 
tions would  bring  him  the  recreation  of  spirit  which  he 
most  needed.  So  he  packed  up  for  work,  and  happened  to 
light  on  the  unhappy  Israel  to  row  him  a  mile  or  so  to  the 
land.  "Iz"  was  taken  "all  aback."  He  believed  that  you 
should  not  strain  yourself  ever  —  much  less  on  Sundays. 
So  from  religious  scruples  he  asked  to  be  excused,  though 
he  offered  to  row  any  one  ashore  if  he  was  only  going  to 
idle  the  hours  away.  After  all,  however,  our  Governor 
represented  our  King,  and  I  was  personally  horrified, 
intending  to  correct  Israel's  position  with  a  round  turn, 
and  show  him  that  we  are  especially  enjoined  to  obey 
"Governors  and  Rulers"  —  as  better  also  than  the  sacri- 
fice of  loafing.  But  the  Governor  forbade  it,  quietly  un- 
packed, put  his  things  away,  and  stayed  aboard.  Israel 
subsequently  cultivated  the  habit  of  remaining  in  bed  on 
Sundays  —  thereby  escaping  being  led  into  temptation. 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS  323 

as  even  Governors  would  not  be  likely  to  go  and  tempt 
him  in  his  bunk. 

I  have  had  others  refuse  to  help  in  really  necessary 
work  on  Sunday.  One  skipper  would  not  get  the  Strath- 
cona  under  way  in  answer  to  a  wireless  appeal  to  come  to 
a  woman  in  danger  of  dying  from  hemorrhage  forty  miles 
distant.  When  we  prepared  to  start  without  him,  he  told 
me  that  he  would  go,  but  that  it  would  be  at  the  price  of 
his  soul  and  we  would  have  to  be  responsible  for  that  loss. 
We  went  all  the  same. 

Our  charts,  such  as  they  were,  were  subsequently  ac- 
cepted by  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  of  England, 
who  generously  invited  me  to  lecture  before  them.  They 
were  later  good  enough  to  award  me  the  Murchison  Prize 
in  1911.  Much  of  the  work  was  really  due  to  Sir  William, 
and  as  much  of  it  as  I  could  put  on  him  to  the  Sabbatarian 
"Iz." 

In  connection  with  the  scientific  work  on  the  coast  I 
well  remember  the  eclipse  of  October,  1905.  All  along  the 
land  it  was  perfectly  visible.  A  break  in  the  clouds  oc- 
curred at  exactly  the  right  moment:  one  fisherman,  to 
console  the  astronomers,  said  that  he  was  very  sorry,  but 
that  he  supposed  it  did  not  much  matter,  as  there  would 
be  another  eclipse  next  week.  The  scientific  explorer,  who 
was  devoting  his  attention  to  the  effect  on  the  earth's 
magnetism,  spent  the  time  of  the  eclipse  in  a  dark  cellar. 
Most  wonderful  magnetic  disturbances  had  been  occur- 
ring almost  every  night,  and  the  night  before  the  event  a 
far  from  ordinary  storm  had  upset  his  instruments,  so 
that  the  effect  of  the  eclipse  on  the  magnetic  indicators 
was  scarcely  distinguishable.  He  had  just  time  after  the 
thing  was  over  to  peep  out  and  see  the  light  returning. 
He  had  watched  his  thermometer  and  found  that  it  fell 
three  degrees  during  totality. 


S24  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

The  year  1908  at  the  mill  we  had  built  a  new  large 
schooner  in  honour  of  that  devoted  friend  of  Labrador, 
our  secretary  in  Boston,  and  had  named  the  vessel  for 
her,  the  Emma  E.White.  She  fetched  Lloyd's  full  bounty 
for  an  A  1  ship.  This  was  a  feather  in  our  caps,  since  she 
was  designed  and  built  by  one  of  our  own  men,  who  was 
no  "scholard, "  having  never  learned  to  read  or  write. 
Will  Hopkins  can  take  an  axe  and  a  few  tools  into  the 
green  woods  in  the  fall,  and  sail  down  the  bay  in  a  new 
schooner  in  the  spring  when  the  ice  goes.  To  see  him 
steaming  the  planking  in  the  open  in  his  own  improvised 
boxes  on  the  top  of  six  feet  of  snow  made  me  stand  and 
takeoff  my  hat  to  him.  He  is  no  good  at  speech-making; 
he  does  not  own  a  dress-suit,  and  he  cannot  dance  a 
tango;  but  he  is  quite  as  useful  a  citizen  as  some  who  can, 
and  his  type  of  education  is  one  which  endears  him  to  all. 
He  gave  me  the  great  pleasure  of  having  our  friend  come 
sailing  into  St.  Anthony  in  the  middle  of  a  fine  day, 
seated  on  the  bow  of  her  namesake,  the  beautiful  and 
valuable  product  of  his  skill,  just  when  we  were  all  ready 
on  the  wharf  to  "sketch  them  both  off,"  as  our  people 
call  taking  a  photograph. 

Our  increasing  buildings  being  all  of  wood,  and  as  the 
two  largest  were  full  of  either  helpless  sick  people  or  an 
ever-increasing  batch  of  children,  we  wanted  something 
safer  than  kerosene  lamps  to  illuminate  the  rooms.  The 
people  here  had  never  seen  electric  light  "tamed,"  as  it 
were,  and  to  us  it  seemed  almost  too  big  a  venture  to  in- 
stall a  plant  of  our  own.  Home  outfits  were  not  common 
in  those  days  even  in  the  States,  and  we  feared  in  any 
case  that  we  could  not  run  it  regularly  enough.  No  one 
except  the  head  of  the  machine  shop,  a  Labrador  boy  and 
Pratt  graduate,  knew  the  first  thing  about  electricity, 
and  he  would  not  always  be  available. 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS  325 

However,  with  the  help  of  friends  we  were  able  to  pur- 
chase a  hot-head  vertical  engine  to  generate  our  current; 
for  our  near-by  streams  freeze  solid  in  winter.  That  en- 
gine has  now  been  running  for  over  ten  years,  and  has 
given  us  electricity  in  St.  Anthony  Hospital  for  operating 
and  X-ray  work  as  well  as  all  our  lighting.  Until  he  died, 
it  was  run  the  greater  part  of  the  time  by  an  Eskimo  boy 
whom  we  had  brought  down  from  the  North  Labrador, 
and  who  was  convalescing  from  empyema.  The  installa- 
tion was  efficiently  done  by  a  volunteer  student  from  the 
Pratt  Institute,  Mr.  Hause. 

On  my  lecture  trip  the  previous  winter  a  gentleman  at 
whose  house  I  was  a  guest  told  me  that  when  quite  a 
youth  he  had  fought  in  the  Civil  War,  been  invalided 
home,  and  advised  to  take  a  sea  voyage  for  his  health. 
He  therefore  took  passage  with  some  Gloucester  fisher- 
men and  set  sail  for  the  Labrador.  The  crew  proved  to 
be  Southern  sympathizers,  and  one  day,  while  my  friend 
was  ashore  taking  a  walk,  the  skipper  slipped  out  and 
left  him  marooned.  He  had  with  him  neither  money, 
spare  clothing,  nor  anything  else;  and  as  British  sympa- 
thies were  also  with  the  South,  he  had  many  doubts  as 
to  how  the  settlers  would  receive  a  penniless  stranger  and 
Northerner.  So  seeing  his  schooner  bound  in  an  easterly 
direction,  he  started  literally  to  run  along  the  shore,  hop- 
ing that  he  might  find  where  she  went  and  catch  her 
again.  Mile  after  mile  he  went,  tearing  through  the  *' tuck- 
amore"  or  dense  undergrowth  of  gnarled  trees,  climbing 
over  high  cliffs,  swimming  or  wading  the  innumerable 
rivers,  skirting  bays,  and  now  and  again  finding  a  short 
beach  along  which  he  could  hurry.  At  night,  wet,  dirty, 
tired,  hungry,  penniless,  he  came  to  a  fisherman's  cot- 
tage and  asked  shelter  and  food.  He  explained  that  he 
was  an  American  gentleman  taking  a  holiday,  but  had  n't 


326  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

a  penny  of  money.  It  spoke  well  for  the  people  that  they 
accepted  his  story.  He  told  me  that  they  both  fed  and 
clothed  him,  and  one  kind-hearted  man  actually  the  next 
day  gave  him  some  oilskin  clothing  and  a  sou'wester  hat 
—  costly  articles  "on  Labrador"  in  those  days.  So  on  and 
on  and  on  he  went,  till  at  last  arriving  at  Red  Bay  he 
found  his  schooner  at  anchor  calmly  fishing.  He  went 
aboard  at  once  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  and  stayed 
there  (having  enjoyed  enough  pedestrian  exercise  for  the 
time  being)  and  no  one  ever  referred  to  his  having  been 
left  behind.  He  was  now,  however,  forty  years  later,  anx- 
ious to  do  something  for  the  people  of  that  section  of  the 
shore,  and  he  gave  me  a  thousand  dollars  toward  building 
a  small  cottage  for  a  district  nurse.  Forteau  was  the  village 
chosen,  and  Dennison  Cottage  erected  as  a  nursing  sta- 
tion and  dispensary.  The  people  at  first  each  gave  a  week 
toward  its  upkeep;  and  even  now  every  man  gives  three 
days  annually.  The  house  has  a  good  garden,  little  wards 
for  in-patients,  and  is  the  centre  of  much  useful  indus- 
trial work,  especially  the  making  of  artificial  flowers.  For 
twelve  years  now.  Miss  Florence  Bailey,  a  nurse  from  the 
Mildmay  Institute  in  London,  has  presided  over  its  des- 
tinies, endeared  herself  to  the  people,  and  done  most  un- 
selfish and  heroic  work  in  that  lonely  station,  which  she 
has  greatly  enlarged  and  improved  by  her  untiring  efforts. 
It  forms  an  admirable  halfway  house  between  Battle  and 
Harrington  Hospitals,  each  being  about  a  hundred  miles 
distant.  A  local  trader  once  wrote  me:  "Sister  Bailey  did 
good  work  last  year.  That  cottage  hospital  is  a  blessing 
to  the  people  of  this  part  of  the  shore.  Who  would  think 
that  by  a  little  act  of  kindness  done  forty-odd  years  ago 
to  an  old  soldier,  we  would  now  be  reaping  the  benefit  of 
such  an  act." 

Only  one  longer  journey  on  foot  on  the  Labrador  coast 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS  327 

is  on  record.  The  traveller  started  from  Quebec  and  walked 
to  Battle  Harbour.  There  he  turned  north  and  walked  to 
Nakvak  Bay.  The  distance  as  the  crow  flies  is  about  four- 
teen hundred  miles.  But  the  man  had  no  boat  of  his  own 
and  only  in  one  or  two  places  accepted  a  passage.  One  bay 
on  the  east  coast  runs  in  for  some  hundred  and  fifty  miles. 
Over  this  he  got  a  boat  fifty  miles  from  the  mouth.  Round 
Kipokak  and  Makkovik,  and  the  bays  south  of  Hope- 
dale,  he  walked  most  of  the  way,  and  these  run  in  for 
forty  miles.  He  carried  practically  nothing  with  him,  and 
depended  on  what  boots  and  clothing  the  people  gave 
him,  eating  berries  and  whatever  else  he  could  find  while 
he  was  in  the  country.  Those  who  housed  him  told  me  that 
they  did  not  see  any  signs  of  madness  about  him,  except 
his  avoidance  of  men  and  refusal  to  go  in  boats  or  mix 
with  others  if  he  could  in  any  way  avoid  it.  He  carried  no 
gun.  No  one  knew  who  he  was  nor  why  he  went  on  such 
a  "cruise."  Long  before  he  reached  the  North  the  theory 
that  he  was  a  murderer  fleeing  from  justice  got  started, 
and  at  some  places  a  very  careful  watch  was  kept  over 
him.  Arrived  at  Nakvak,  he  went  to  the  house  of  every- 
one's friend,  George  Ford.  That  is  one  of  the  most  inac- 
cessible places  in  the  world.  No  mail  steamer  ever  goes 
there,  and  no  schooner  ever  anchors  nearer  than  a  few 
miles.  It  is  at  the  bottom  of  a  fjord  twenty-five  miles  long, 
with  very  precipitous  cliffs  two  thousand  feet  high  on 
each  side  and  bottomless  water  below.  It  was  then  thirty 
miles  from  the  nearest  house,  with  ranges  of  mountains 
between,  and  was  the  most  northerly  house  on  the  Lab- 
rador. Here  this  phenomenon  celebrated  his  arrival  by 
climbing  up  onto  the  ridge  of  the  house,  when  lo!  most 
prosaic  of  accidents,  he  fell  off  and  broke  his  neck.  The 
puzzle  has  always  been  why  he  elected  to  carry  an  un- 
broken neck  at  such  cost  all  that  long  distance. 


S28  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Many  inexplicable  things  happen  "on  Labrador." 
Thus,  one  year  while  visiting  at  the  head  of  Hamilton 
Inlet,  a  Scotch  settler  came  aboard  to  ask  my  advice 
about  a  large  animal  that  had  appeared  round  his  house. 
Though  he  had  sat  up  night  after  night  with  his  gun,  he 
had  never  seen  it.  His  children  had  seen  it  several  times 
disappearing  into  the  trees.  The  French  agent  of  Revillon 
Freres,  twenty  miles  away,  had  come  over,  and  together 
they  had  tracked  it,  measured  the  footmarks  in  the  mud, 
and  even  fenced  some  of  them  round.  The  stride  was 
about  eight  feet,  the  marks  as  of  the  cloven  hoofs  of  an  ox. 
The  children  described  the  creature  as  looking  like  a  huge 
hairy  man;  and  several  nights  the  dogs  had  been  driven 
growling  from  the  house  into  the  water.  Twice  the  whole 
family  had  heard  the  creature  prowling  around  the  cot- 
tage, and  tapping  at  the  doors  and  windows.  The  now 
grown-up  children  persist  in  saying  that  they  saw  this 
wild  thing.  Their  house  is  twenty  miles  up  the  large  Grand 
River,  and  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  the  coast. 

An  old  fellow  called  Harry  Howell  was  one  winter  night 
missing  from  his  home.  He  had  been  hunting,  and  only 
too  late,  after  a  blizzard  set  in,  was  it  discovered  that  he 
was  absent.  In  the  morning  the  men  gathered  to  make  a 
search,  but  at  that  moment  in  walked  "old  Harry"!  He 
told  me  later  that  he  was  coming  home  in  the  afternoon 
when  the  blizzard  began.  It  was  dirty,  thick  of  snow,  and 
cold.  Suddenly  he  heard  bells  ringing,  and  knew  that  it 
was  fairies  bidding  him  follow  them — because  he  had 
followed  them  before.  So  off  he  went,  pushing  his  way 
through  the  driving  snow.  When  at  last  he  reached  the 
foot  of  a  gnarled  old  tree  in  the  forest,  the  bells  stopped, 
and  he  knew  that  was  the  place  where  he  must  stay  for 
the  night.  So  he  laid  some  of  the  partridges  which  he  had 
killed  into  a  hole  in  the  snow  close  to  the  trunk,  crawled 


THAT  DO  BUSINESS  IN  GREAT  WATERS  329 

down  and  used  them  for  a  seat,  and  placed  the  rest  of  the 
frozen  birds  at  his  feet.  Then  he  pulled  up  his  dickey,  or 
kossak,  over  his  head,  and  with  his  back  to  the  tree,  went 
to  sleep  while  the  snow  was  still  driving.  There  was  no 
persuading  that  man  that  the  ringing  bells  were  in  his  own 
imagination. 

Many  years  ago  a  Norwegian  captain  on  the  Labrador 
told  me  the  following  story.  One  day  the  carpenter  of  his 
schooner,  a  man  whom  he  had  known  for  three  voyages, 
and  trusted  thoroughly,  was  steering  on  the  course  which 
the  mate  had  given  him.  All  at  once  the  mate  came  and 
found  the  man  steering  four  points  out.  When  he  up- 
braided him,  he  answered,  "He  came  and  told  me  to." 
"Nobody  did,"  replied  the  mate.  "Go  northwest." 

Three  times  the  experience  was  repeated,  and  at  last 
the  mate  reported  the  matter  to  the  skipper.  He  imme- 
diately suggested,  "Well,  let  us  go  on  running  in  the 
direction  he  insists  on  taking  for  a  while  and  see  if  any- 
thing happens."  At  the  end  of  two  hours  they  came  upon 
a  square-rigger  with  her  decks  just  awash,  and  six  men 
clinging  to  her  rigging.  As  they  came  alongside  the  sinking 
vessel  the  carpenter  pointed  aghast  to  one  of  the  rescued 
crew  and  cried  out,  "There's  the  man  who  came  and  told 
me  the  skipper  said  to  change  the  course." 

In  medicine,  too,  things  happen  which  we  professional 
men  are  just  as  unable  to  explain.  A  big-bodied,  success- 
ful fisherman  came  aboard  my  steamer  one  day,  saying 
that  he  had  toothache.  This  was  probable,  for  his  jaw  was 
swollen,  his  mouth  hard  to  open,  and  the  offending  molar 
easily  visible  within.  When  I  produced  the  forceps  he 
protested  most  loudly  that  he  would  not  have  it  touched 
for  worlds. 

"Why,  then,  did  you  come  to  me.^*"  I  asked.  "You  are 
wasting  my  time." 


330  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

"I  wanted  you  to  charm  her,  Doctor,"  he  answered, 
quite  naturally. 

"  But,  my  dear  friend,  I  do  not  know  how  to  charm,  and 
don't  think  it  would  do  the  slightest  good.  Doctors  are 
not  allowed  to  do  such  things." 

He  was  evidently  very  much  put  out,  and  turning  round 
to  go,  said,  "I  knows  why  you'se  won't  charm  her.  It's 
because  I'm  a  Roman  Catholic." 

"Nonsense.  If  you  really  think  that  it  would  do  any 
good,  come  along.  You'll  have  to  pay  twenty-five  cents 
exactly  as  if  you  had  it  pulled  out." 

"Gladly  enough.  Doctor.  Please  go  ahead." 

He  sat  on  the  rail,  a  burly  carcass,  the  incarnation 
of  materialism,  while  the  doctor,  feeling  the  size  of  a 
sandflea,  put  one  finger  into  his  mouth  and  touched  the 
molar,  while  he  repeated  the  most  mystic  nonsense  he 
could  think  of,  "Abracadabra  Tiddly winkum  Umslo- 
poga"  — and  then  jumped  the  finger  out  lest  the  patient 
might  close  his  ponderous  jaw.  The  fisherman  took  a  turn 
around  the  deck,  pulled  out  the  quarter,  and  solemnly 
handed  it  to  me,  saying,  "All  the  pain  has  gone.  Many 
thanks,  Doctor."  I  found  myself  standing  alone  in  amaze- 
ment, twiddling  a  miserable  shilling,  and  wondering  how 
I  came  to  make  such  a  fool  of  myself. 

A  month  later  the  patient  again  came  to  see  me  when 
we  happened  to  be  in  his  harbour.  The  swelling  had  gone, 
the  molar  was  there.  "Ne'er  an  ache  out  of  her  since," 
the  patient  laughed.  I  have  not  reported  this  end  result 
to  the  committee  of  the  American  College  of  Surgeons, 
though  much  attention  is  now  devoted  to  the  follow-up 
and  end-result  department  of  surgery  and  medicine. 


CHAPTER  XX 

MARRIAGE 

It  was  now  the  fall  of  1908,  and  the  time  had  come  for  me 
to  visit  England  again  and  try  and  arouse  fresh  interest  in 
our  work;  and  this  motive  was  combined  with  the  desire 
to  see  my  old  mother,  who  was  now  nearing  her  fourscore 
years.  I  decided  to  leave  in  November  and  return  via 
America  in  the  spring  to  receive  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  Williams  College  and  of  M.A.  from  Har- 
vard, which  I  had  been  generously  offered. 

My  lecture  tour  this  winter  was  entrusted  to  an  agency. 
Propaganda  is  a  recognized  necessity  in  human  life, 
though  it  has  little  attraction  for  most  men.  To  me  having 
to  ask  personally  for  money  even  for  other  people  was 
always  a  difficulty.  Scores  of  times  I  have  been  blamed  for 
not  even  stating  in  a  lecture  that  we  needed  help.  The  dis- 
taste for  beating  the  big  drum,  which  lecturing  for  your 
own  work  always  appears  to  be,  makes  me  quite  unable 
to  see  any  virtue  in  not  doing  it,  but  just  asking  the  Lord 
to  do  it.  If  I  really  were  convinced  that  He  would  meet 
the  expenses  whether  I  worked  or  not,  I  should  believe 
that  neither  would  He  let  people  suffer  and  die  untended 
out  here  or  anywhere  else.  Indeed,  it  would  seem  a  work 
of  supererogation  to  have  to  remind  Him  of  the  necessity 
that  existed. 

The  fact  that  we  have  to  show  pictures  of  the  work 
which  we  are  doing  is  tiresome  and  takes  time,  but  it  en- 
courages us  to  have  pictures  worth  taking  and  to  do  deeds 
which  we  are  not  ashamed  to  narrate.  It  also  stimulates 
others  to  give  themselves  as  well  as  their  money  to  similar 
kinds  of  work  at  their  own  doorsteps,  to  see  how  much 


332  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

like  themselves  their  almoners  are.  Only  to-day  my  vol- 
unteer secretary  told  me  that  he  honestly  expected  to 
meet  "a  bearded  old  fogey  in  spectacles,"  not  a  man  who 
can  shoot  his  own  dinner  from  the  wing  or  who  enjoys 
the  justifiable  pleasures  of  Ufe. 

The  religion  of  Christ  never  permitted  me  to  accept 
the  idea  that  there  is  "nothing  to  do,  only  believe." 
Every  man  ought  to  earn  his  own  bread  and  the  means  to 
support  his  family.  Why,  then,  should  you  have  only  to 
ask  the  Lord  to  give  unasked  the  wherewithal  to  feed 
other  people's  families  .f* 

Lecturing  for  philanthropies,  only  another  word  for  the 
means  to  help  along  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  is  in 
England  usually  carried  on  through  the  ordinary  mis- 
sionary meetings;  and  in  my  previous  experience  they 
were  not  generally  much  credit  to  the  splendid  objects 
in  view.  The  lectures  were  aften  patronized  by  small 
audiences  largely  composed  of  women  and  children. 

That  particular  winter  in  England  I  had  the  privilege 
of  addressing  all  sorts  of  workmen's  clubs  and  city  lec- 
ture-course audiences,  people  who  would  have  "the 
shivers"  almost  if  one  had  asked  them  to  attend  a  "mis- 
sionary" lecture.  The  collection,  or  even  the  final  mone- 
tary outcome,  is  far  from  being  the  test  of  the  value  of  the 
address.  To  commend  Christ's  religion  by  minimizing 
in  any  way  the  prerogative  He  gave  men  of  carrying  on 
the  work  of  His  kingdom  in  their  human  efforts  is  to  sap 
the  very  appeal  that  attracts  manhood  to  Him.  I  never 
wanted  to  sing,  "Oh!  to  be  nothing,  nothing."  I  always 
wished  to  sing,  "Oh!  make  me  something,  something  "  — 
that  shall  leave  some  footprints  on  the  sands  of  time,  and 
have  some  record  of  talents  gained  to  offer  a  Master 
whom  we  believe  to  be  righteous. 

When  spring  came  and  the  lectures  were  over,  a  new 


MARRIAGE  333 

idea  suddenly  dawned  upon  me.  If  I  were  going  to 
America  to  festive  gatherings  and  to  have  some  honours 
conferred,  why  leave  the  mother  behind?  Seventy-eight 
years  is  not  old.  She  was  born  in  India,  had  lived  in  Eng- 
land, and  suppose  anything  did  happen,  why  not  sleep 
in  America.?  —  she  would  be  just  as  near  God  there.  The 
splendid  Mauretania  not  only  took  us  safely  over,  but 
gave  me  also  that  gift  which  I  firmly  believe  God  de- 
signed for  me  —  a  real  partner  to  share  in  my  joys  and 
sorrows,  to  encourage  and  support  in  trouble  and  failures, 
to  inspire  and  advise  in  a  thousand  ways,  and  in  addition 
to  bring  into  my  distant  field  of  work  a  personal  comrade 
with  the  culture,  wisdom,  and  enthusiasm  of  the  Ameri- 
can life  and  the  training  of  one  of  the  very  best  of  its 
Universities. 

We  met  on  board  the  second  day  out.  She  was  travel- 
ling with  a  Scotch  banker  of  Chicago  and  his  wife,  Mr. 
W.  R.  Stirling,  whose  daughter  was  her  best  friend.  They 
were  returning  from  a  motor  tour  through  Europe  and 
Algeria.  The  Mauretania  takes  only  four  and  a  half  days 
in  crossing,  and  never  before  did  I  realize  the  drawbacks 
of  "hustle,"  and  yet  the  extreme  need  of  it  on  my  part. 
The  degrees  of  longitude  slipped  by  so  quickly  that  I 
felt  personally  aggrieved  when  one  day  we  made  over 
six  hundred  miles,  and  the  captain  told  us  in  triumph  that 
it  was  a  new  record.  The  ship  seemed  to  be  paying  off 
some  spite  against  me.  My  mother  kept  mostly  to  her 
cabin.  Though  constantly  in  to  see  her,  I  am  afraid  I  did 
not  unduly  worry  her  to  join  me  on  the  deck.  When  just 
on  landing  I  told  her  that  I  had  asked  a  fellow  passenger 
to  become  my  wife,  I  am  sure  had  the  opportunity  arisen 
she  would  have  tumbled  down  the  Mauretania's  stair- 
case. When  she  had  the  joy  of  meeting  the  girl,  her  equa- 
nimity was  so  far  upset  as  to  let  an  unaccustomed  tear  roll 


g34  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

down  her  cheek.  That,  at  least,  is  one  of  the  tears  which 
I  have  cost  her  which  brings  no  regrets.  For  she  confesses 
that  it  often  puzzles  her  to  which  of  our  lives  the  event 
has  meant  most. 

The  constant  little  activities  of  my  life  had  so  filled 
every  hour  of  time,  and  so  engrossed  my  thoughts,  that 
I  had  never  thought  to  philosophize  on  the  advisability 
of  marriage,  nor  stopped  to  compare  my  Hfe  with  those  of 
my  neighbors.  There  is  no  virtue  in  keeping  the  Ninth 
Commandment  and  not  envying  your  neighbour's  con- 
dition or  goods  when  it  never  enters  your  head  or  heart 
to  worry  about  them;  and  when  you  are  getting  what  you 
care  about  no  halo  is  due  you  for  not  falling  victim  to 
envy  or  jealousy  of  others.  I  have  not  been  in  the  habit 
of  praying  for  special  personal  providences  like  fine 
weather  in  my  section  of  the  earth,  or  for  head  wind  for 
the  schooners  so  as  to  give  me  a  fair  wind  for  my  steamer, 
except  so  far  as  one  prays  for  the  recognition  of  God's 
good  hand  in  everything. 

I  can  honestly  protest  that  nothing  in  my  life  ever 
came  more  "out  of  the  blue"  than  my  marriage;  and 
beyond  that  I  am  increasingly  certain  each  day  that  it 
did  come  out  of  that  blue  where  God  dwells. 

I  knew  neither  whence  she  came  nor  whither  she  was 
going.  Indeed,  I  only  found  out  when  the  proposition 
was  really  put  that  I  did  not  even  know  her  name  —  for 
it  was  down  on  the  passenger  list  as  one  of  the  daughters 
of  the  friends  with  whom  she  was  travelling.  Fortu- 
nately it  never  entered  my  head  that  it  mattered.  For  I 
doubt  if  I  should  have  had  the  courage  to  question  the 
chaperon,  whose  daughter  she  presumably  was.  It  cer- 
tainly was  a  "poser"  to  be  told,  "But  you  don't  even 
know  my  name."  Had  I  not  been  a  bit  of  a  seaman,  and 
often  compelled  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  to  act  first 


MARRIAGE  335 

and  think  afterwards,  what  the  consequences  might  have 
been  I  cannot  say.  Fortunately,  I  remembered  that  it 
was  not  the  matter  at  issue,  and  explained,  without 
admitting  the  impeachment,  that  the  only  question  that 
interested  me  in  the  least  was  what  I  hoped  that  it  might 
become.  Incidentally  she  mentioned  that  she  had  only 
once  heard  of  me.  It  was  the  year  previous  when  I  had 
been  speaking  at  Bryn  Mawr  and  she  had  refused  in  no 
measured  terms  an  invitation  to  attend,  as  sounding 
entirely  too  dull  for  her  predilections.  I  have  wondered 
whether  this  was  not  another  "small  providence." 

A  pathological  condition  of  one's  internal  workings  is 
not  unusual  even  in  Britons  who  "go  down  to  the  sea 
in  ships,"  but  such  genius  as  our  family  has  displayed 
has,  so  history  assures  us,  shone  best  on  a  quarter-deck; 
and  on  this  occasion  it  pleased  God  ultimately  to  add 
another  naval  victory  to  our  credit.  It  is  generally  ad- 
mitted that  an  abnormal  mentality  accompanies  this 
not  uncommon  experience  of  human  life,  and  I  found  my 
lack  of  appreciation  of  the  rapid  voyage  paralleled  by  a 
wicked  satisfaction  that  my  mother  preferred  the  brass 
four-poster,  so  thoughtfully  provided  for  her  by  the 
Cunard  Company,  to  the  risks  of  the  unsteady  prome- 
nade deck. 

When  the  girl's  way  and  mine  parted  in  that  last  word 
in  material  jostlings,  the  custom-house  shed  in  Man- 
hattan, after  the  liner  arrived,  I  realized  that  it  was 
rather  an  armistice  than  a  permanent  settlement  which 
I  had  achieved.  Though  there  was  no  father  in  the  case, 
I  learned  that  there  was  a  mother  and  a  home  in  Chicago. 
These  were  formidable  strongholds  for  a  homeless  wan- 
derer to  assault,  but  rendered  doubly  so  by  the  fact  that 
there  was  neither  brother  nor  sister  to  leave  behind  to 
mitigate  the  possible  vacancy.  The  "everlasting  yea'* 


336  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

not  having  been  forthcoming,  under  the  circumstances 
it  was  no  easy  task  for  me  to  keep  faith  with  the  many 
appointments  to  lecture  on  Labrador  which  had  been 
made  for  me.  The  inexorable  schedule  kept  me  week 
after  week  in  the  East.  Fortunately  the  generous  hos- 
pitality of  many  old  friends  who  wanted  the  pleasure  of 
meeting  my  mother  kept  my  mind  somewhat  occupied. 
But  I  confess  at  the  back  of  it  the  forthcoming  venture 
loomed  up  more  and  more  momentous  as  the  fateful  day 
drew  near  for  me  to  start  for  Chicago. 

This  visit  to  my  wife's  beautiful  country  home  among 
the  trees  on  the  bluff  of  Lake  Michigan  in  Lake  Forest 
was  one  long  dream.  My  mother  and  I  were  now  made 
acquainted  with  the  family  and  friends  of  my  fiancee. 
Her  father,  Colonel  MacClanahan,  a  man  of  six  feet 
five  inches  in  height,  had  been  Judge  Advocate  General 
on  the  Staff  of  Braxton  Bragg  and  had  fought  under 
General  Robert  E.  Lee.  He  was  a  Southerner  of  Scotch 
extraction,  having  been  born  and  brought  up  in  Ten- 
nessee. A  lawyer  by  training,  after  the  war,  when  every- 
thing that  belonged  to  him  was  destroyed  in  the  "re- 
construction period,"  and  being  still  a  very  young  man, 
he  had  gone  North  to  Chicago  and  begun  life  again  at 
his  profession.  There  he  met  and  married,  in  1884,  Miss 
Rosamond  Hill,  who  was  born  in  Burlington,  Vermont, 
but  who,  since  childhood  and  the  death  of  her  parents, 
had  lived  with  her  married  sister,  Mrs.  Charles  Durand, 
of  Chicago.  The  MacClanahans  had  two  children  —  the 
boy,  Kinloch,  dying  at  an  early  age  as  the  result  of  an 
accident.  Colonel  MacClanahan  himself  died  a  few 
months  later,  leaving  a  widow  and  one  child,  Anna  Eliza- 
beth Caldwell  MacClanahan.  She  and  her  mother  had 
lived  the  greater  part  of  the  time  with  Mrs.  Durand,  who 
died  something  more  than  a  year  before  our  engagement. 


MARRIAGE  337 

The  friends  with  whom  my  fiancee  had  been  travel- 
ling  were  almost  next-door  neighbours  in  Lake  Forest. 
They  made  my  short  stay  doubly  happy  by  endless 
kindnesses;  and  all  through  the  years,  till  his  death  in 
1918,  Mr.  Stirling  gave  me  not  only  a  friendship  which 
meant  more  to  me  than  I  can  express,  but  his  loving  and 
invaluable  aid  and  counsel  in  our  work. 

In  spite  of  my  many  years  of  sailor  life,  I  found  that 
I  was  expected  among  other  things  to  ride  a  horse,  my 
fiancee  being  devoted  to  that  means  of  progression.  The 
days  when  I  had  ridden  to  hounds  in  England  as  a  boy 
in  Cheshire  stood  me  in  some  little  stead,  for  like  swim- 
ming, tennis,  and  other  pastimes  calling  for  coordination, 
riding  is  never  quite  forgotten.  But  remembering  Mr. 
Winkle's  experiences,  it  was  not  without  some  misgivings 
that  I  found  a  shellback  like  myself  galloping  behind  my 
lady's  charger.  My  last  essay  at  horseback  riding  had 
been  just  eleven  years  previously  in  Iceland.  Having  to 
wait  a  few  days  at  Reikkavik,  I  had  hired  a  whole  bevy 
of  ponies  with  a  guide  to  take  myself  and  the  young 
skipper  of  our  vessel  for  a  three  days'  ride  to  see  the 
geysers.  He  had  never  been  on  the  back  of  any  animal 
before,  and  was  nevertheless  not  surprised  or  daunted 
at  falling  off  frequently,  though  an  interlude  of  being 
dragged  along  with  one  foot  in  the  stirrup  over  lava  beds 
made  no  little  impression  upon  him.  Fodder  of  all  kinds 
is  very  scarce  in  the  volcanic  tufa  of  which  all  that  land 
consists,  and  any  moment  that  one  stopped  was  always 
devoted  by  our  ponies  to  grubbing  for  blades  of  grass 
in  the  holes.  On  our  return  to  the  ship  the  crew  could  not 
help  noticing  that  the  skipper  for  many  days  ceased  to 
patronize  the  lockers  or  any  other  seat,  and  soon  they 
were  rejoicing  that  for  some  reason  he  was  unable  to  sit 
down  at  all.  He  explained  it  by  saying  that  his  ponies  ate 


838  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

so  much  lava  that  it  stuck  out  under  their  skins,  and 
I  myself  recall  feeling  inclined  to  agree  with  him. 

The  journey  from  Lake  Forest  to  Labrador  would  have 
been  a  tedious  one,  but  by  good  fortune  a  friend  from 
New  York  had  arranged  to  come  and  visit  the  coast  in 
his  steam  yacht,  the  Enchantress,  and  was  good  enough 
to  pick  me  up  at  Bras  d'Or.  Dr.  Alexander  Graham  Bell, 
who  had  previously  shown  me  much  kindness,  permitted 
us  to  rendezvous  at  his  house,  and  for  a  second  time  I 
enjoyed  seeing  some  of  the  experiments  of  his  most  ver- 
satile brain.  His  aeroplanes,  telephones,  and  other  in- 
ventions were  all  intensely  interesting,  but  among  his 
other  lines  of  work  the  effort  to  develop  a  race  of  sheep, 
which  had  litters  just  as  pigs  do,  interested  me  most. 

Francis  Sayre,  whom  I  had  heard  win  the  prize  at 
Williams  with  his  valedictory  speech,  was  again  to  be 
my  summer  secretary.  On  our  arrival  at  St.  Anthony  we 
found  a  great  deal  going  on.  The  fame  as  a  surgeon  of  my 
colleague,  Dr.  John  Mason  Little,  had  spread  so  widely 
that  St.  Anthony  Hospital  would  no  longer  hold  the 
patients  who  sought  assistance  at  it.  Fifty  would  arrive 
on  a  single  mail  boat.  They  were  dumped  down  on  the 
little  wharf,  having  been  landed  in  small  punts  from  the 
steamer,  as  in  those  days  we  had  no  proper  dock  to 
which  the  boats  could  come.  The  little  waiting-room  in 
the  hospital  at  night  resembled  nothing  so  much  as  a 
newly  opened  sardine  tin;  and  to  cater  for  the  waiting 
patients  was  a  Sisyphean  task  without  the  Hercules. 
Through  the  instrumentality  of  Dr.  Little's  sister  a  fund 
of  ten  thousand  dollars  was  raised  to  double  the  size  of 
the  hospital,  and  the  work  of  building  was  begun  on 
my  return.  Although  the  capacity  was  greatly  increased 
thereby  we  have  really  been  unable  ever  to  make  our 
building  what  it  ought  to  be  to  meet  the  problem.  The 


MARRIAGE  339 

first  part,  constructed  of  green  lumber  hauled  from  the 
woods,  and  other  wings  added  at  different  periods  of 
growth,  the  endeavour  to  blast  out  suitable  heating- 
plant  accommodations  —  all  this  has  left  the  hospital 
building  more  or  less  a  thing  of  rags  and  patches,  and 
most  uneconomical  to  run.  We  are  urgently  in  need  of 
having  it  rebuilt  entirely  of  either  brick  or  stone,  in  order 
to  resist  the  winter  cold,  to  give  more  eflBciency  and 
comfort  to  patients  and  staff  and  to  conserve  our  fuel, 
which  is  the  most  serious  item  of  expense  we  have  to 
meet. 

But  at  that  time  with  all  its  capacity  for  service  the 
new  addition  was  rising,  sounding  yet  one  more  note  of 
praise  in  better  ability  to  meet  the  demands  upon  us. 

And  pari  passu  came  the  beautiful  offer  of  my  friend, 
Mr.  Sayre,  to  double  the  size  of  our  orphanage,  putting 
up  the  new  wing  in  memory  of  his  father.  This  meant 
that  instead  of  twenty  we  might  now  accommodate 
forty  children  at  a  pinch.  Life  is  so  short  that  it  is  the 
depths  of  pathos  to  be  hampered  in  doing  one's  work  for 
the  lack  of  a  few  dollars.  Of  great  interest  to  my  fiancee 
and  myself  was  the  selection  of  a  piece  of  ground  adjoin- 
ing the  Mission  land,  and  the  erection  for  ourselves  of 
the  home  which  we  had  planned  and  designed  together 
before  I  had  left  Lake  Forest.  We  chose  some  land  up  on 
the  hillside  and  overlooking  the  sea  and  the  harbour, 
where  the  view  should  be  as  comprehensive  as  possible. 
But  we  feared  that  even  though  our  new  house  was  very 
literally  "founded  upon  a  rock,"  the  winds  might  some 
day  remove  it  bodily  from  its  abiding-place,  and  there- 
fore we  riveted  the  structure  with  heavy  iron  bolts  to 
the  solid  bedrock. 

One  excitement  of  that  season  was  Admiral  Peary's 
return  from  the  North  Pole.  We  were  cruising  near  Indian 


340  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Harbour  when  some  visitors  came  aboard  to  make  use 
of  our  wireless  telegraph,  which  at  that  time  we  had 
installed  on  board.  It  proved  to  be  Mr.  Harry  Whitney. 
It  was  the  first  intimation  that  we  had  had  that  Peary 
was  returning  that  year.  Whitney  had  met  Cook  coming 
back  from  the  polar  sea  on  the  west  side  of  the  Gulf, 
where  he  had  disappeared  about  eighteen  months  pre- 
viously. I  had  met  Dr.  Cook  several  times  myself,  and 
indeed  I  had  slept  at  his  house  in  Brooklyn.  He  had 
visited  Battle  Harbour  Hospital  in  1893  when  he  was 
wrecked  in  the  steamer  in  which  he  was  conducting  a 
party  to  visit  Greenland.  We  had  again  seen  him  as  he 
went  North  with  Mr.  Bradley  in  the  yacht,  and  he  had 
sent  us  back  some  Greenland  dogs  to  mix  their  blood 
with  our  dogs,  and  so  perhaps  improve  their  breed  and 
endurance.  These,  however,  I  had  later  felt  it  necessary 
to  kill,  for  the  Greenland  dogs  carry  the  dangerous  tape- 
worm which  is  such  a  menace  to  man,  and  of  which  our 
Labrador  dogs  are  entirely  free  so  far. 

The  picture  of  this  meeting  on  the  ice  between  Cook 
and  Whitney  gave  us  the  impression  of  another  Nansen 
and  Jackson  at  Spitzbergen.  Whitney  had  welcomed 
Cook  warmly,  had  witnessed  his  troubles  at  Etah,  and 
his  departure  by  komatik,  and  had  taken  charge  of  his 
instruments  and  records  to  carry  South  with  him  when 
he  came  home.  But  his  ship  was  delayed  and  delayed, 
and  when  Peary  in  the  Roosevelt  passed  on  his  way 
South,  fearing  to  be  left  another  winter  Whitney  had 
accepted  a  passage  on  her  at  the  cost  of  leaving  Cook's 
material  behind.  He  had  met  his  own  boat  farther  south 
and  had  transferred  to  her.  He  left  the  impression  very 
firmly  on  all  our  minds  that  both  he  and  Dr.  Cook  really 
believed  that  the  latter  had  found  the  long-sought  Pole. 

A  little  later,  while  cruising  in  thick  weather  in  the 


COMMODORE  PEARY  ON  HIS  WAY  BACK  FROM  THE  POLE,  1909 


MARRIAGE  341 

Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  my  wireless  operator  came  in  and 
said:  "There  can  be  no  harm  telling  you,  Doctor,  that 
Peary  is  at  Battle  Harbour.  He  is  wiring  to  Washington 
that  he  has  found  the  Pole,  and  also  he  is  asking  his  com- 
mittee if  he  may  present  the  Mission  with  his  superfluous 
supplies,  or  whether  he  is  to  sell  them  to  you."  Seeing  that 
it  is  not  easy  to  know  whence  wireless  messages  come  if 
the  sender  does  not  own  up  to  his  whereabouts,  I  at  once 
ordered  him  to  wireless  to  Peary  at  Battle  the  simple 
words:  "Give  it  to  them,  of  course,"  and  sign  it  "Wash- 
ington." I  knew  that  the  Commander  would  see  the  joke, 
and  if  the  decision  turned  out  later  to  be  incorrect,  it 
could  easily  be  rectified  by  purchasing  the  goods.  A  tin 
of  his  brown  bread  now  lies  among  my  curios  and  one 
of  his  sledges  is  in  my  barn. 

On  our  arrival  at  Battle  Harbour  we  found  the  Roose- 
velt lying  at  the  wharf  repainting  and  refitting.  A  whole 
host  of  newspaper  men  and  other  friends  had  come 
North  to  welcome  the  explorer  home.  Battle  was  quite 
a  gay  place;  but  it  was  living  up  to  its  name,  for  Peary 
not  only  claimed  that  he  had  found  the  Pole,  but  also 
that  Cook  had  not;  and  he  was  realizing  what  a  hard 
thing  it  is  to  prove  a  negative.  We  had  a  very  delightful 
time  with  the  party,  and  greatly  enjoyed  meeting  all  the 
members  of  the  expedition.  Among  them  was  the  ill- 
fated  Borup,  destined  shortly  to  be  drowned  on  a  simple 
canoe  trip,  and  the  indomitable  and  athletic  Macmillan 
who  subsequently  led  the  Crocker  Land  expedition,  our 
own  schooner  George  B.  Cluett  carrying  them  to  Etah. 

My  secretary,  Mr.  Sayre,  was  just  about  to  leave  for 
America,  and  at  Peary's  request  he  transferred  to  the 
Roosevelt  with  his  typewriter,  to  help  the  Commander 
with  a  few  of  his  many  notes  and  records.  I  dare  say  that 
he  got  an  inside  view  of  the  question  then  agitating  the 


342  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

world  from  Washington  to  Copenhagen;  but  if  so,  he 
has  remained  forever  silent  about  it.  For  our  part  we 
were  glad  that  some  one  had  found  the  Pole,  for  it  has 
been  a  costly  quest  in  both  fine  men  and  valuable  time, 
energy,  and  money.  It  has  caused  lots  of  trouble  and 
sorrow,  and  so  far  at  least  its  practical  issues  have  been 
few. 

Our  wedding  had  been  scheduled  for  November,  and 
for  the  first  time  I  had  found  a  Labrador  summer  long. 
In  the  late  fall  I  left  for  Chicago  on  a  mission  that  had 
no  flavour  of  the  North  Pole  about  it.  We  were  married 
in  Grace  Episcopal  Church,  Chicago,  on  November  18, 
1909.  Our  wedding  was  foUov/ed  by  a  visit  to  the  Hot 
Springs  of  Virginia;  and  then  "heigho,"  and  a  flight  for 
the  North.  We  sailed  from  St.  John's,  Newfoundland,  in 
January.  I  had  assured  my  wife,  who  is  an  excellent 
sailor,  that  she  would  scarcely  notice  the  motion  of  the 
ship  on  the  coastal  trip  of  three  hundred  miles.  Instead 
of  five  days,  it  took  nine;  and  we  steamed  straight  out 
of  the  Narrows  at  St.  John's  into  a  head  gale  and  a 
blizzard  of  snow.  The  driving  spray  froze  onto  every 
thing  till  the  ship  was  sugared  hke  a  vast  Christmas 
cake.  It  made  the  home  which  we  had  built  at  St. 
Anthony  appear  perfectly  delightful.  My  wife  had  had 
her  furniture  sent  North  during  the  summer,  so  that 
now  the  "Lares  and  Penates"  with  which  she  had  been 
familiar  from  childhood  seemed  to  extend  a  mute  but 
hearty  welcome  to  us  from  their  new  setting. 

We  have  three  children,  all  born  at  St.  Anthony.  Our 
elder  son,  Wilfred  Thomason,  was  born  in  the  fall  of 
1910;  Kinloch  Pascoe  in  the  fall  of  1912,  two  years  al- 
most to  a  day  behind  his  brother;  and  lastly  a  daughter, 
Rosamond  Loveday,  who  followed  her  brothers  in  1917. 
In  the  case  of  the  two  latter  children  the  honours  of  the 


MARRIAGE  343 

name  were  divided  between  both  sides  of  the  family, 
Kinloch  and  Rosamond  being  old  family  names  on  my 
wife's  side,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  have  been 
Pascoe  and  Loveday  Grenfells  from  time  immemorial. 

Nearly  ten  years  have  now  rolled  away  since  our 
marriage.  The  puzzle  to  me  is  how  I  ever  got  along  be- 
fore; and  these  last  nine  years  have  been  so  crowded  with 
the  activities  and  worries  of  the  increasing  cares  of  a 
growing  work,  that  without  the  love  and  inspiration  and 
intellectual  help  of  a  true  comrade,  I  could  never  have 
stood  up  under  them.  Every  side  of  life  is  developed  and 
broadened  by  companionship.  I  admit  of  no  separation 
of  life  into  "secular"  and  "rehgious."  Rehgion,  if  it 
means  anything,  means  the  Hfe  and  activities  of  our 
divine  spirit  on  earth  in  relation  to  our  Father  in  heaven. 
I  am  convinced  from  experience  of  the  supreme  value  to 
that  of  a  happy  marriage,  and  that  "team  work"  is 
God's  plan  for  us  on  this  earth. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

NEW  VENTURES 

No  human  life  can  be  perfect,  or  even  be  Kved  without 
troubles.  Clams  have  their  troubles,  I  dare  say.  A  queer 
sort  of  sinking  feeling  just  hke  descending  in  a  fast 
elevator  comes  over  one,  as  if  trouble  and  the  abdominal 
viscera  had  a  direct  connection.  Some  one  has  said  that 
it  must  be  because  that  is  where  the  average  mind 
centres.  Thus,  when  we  lost  the  little  steamer  Swallow 
which  we  were  towing,  and  with  it  the  evidence  of  a 
crime  and  the  road  to  the  prevention  of  its  repetition,  it 
absolutely  sickened  me  for  two  or  three  days,  or,  to  be 
more  exact,  during  two  or  three  nights.  It  was  all  quite 
unnecessary,  for  we  can  see  now  that  the  matter  worked 
out  for  the  best.  The  fact  that  troubles  hurt  most  when 
one  is  at  rest  and  one's  mind  unoccupied,  and  in  the 
night  when  one's  vitality  is  lowest,  is  a  great  comfort, 
because  that  shows  how  it  is  something  physical  that 
is  at  fault,  and  no  physical  troubles  are  of  very  great 
importance. 

The  summer  of  1910  brought  me  a  fine  crop  of  personal 
worries,  and  probably  deservedly  so,  for  no  one  should 
leave  his  business  affairs  too  much  to  another,  without 
guarantees,  occasionally  renewed,  that  all  is  well.  Few 
professional  men  are  good  at  business,  and  personally  I 
have  no  liking  for  it.  This,  combined  with  an  over-read- 
iness to  accept  as  helpers  men  whose  only  qualifications 
have  sometimes  been  of  their  own  rating,  was  really 
spoiling  for  trouble  —  and  mine  came  through  the  series 
of  cooperative  stores. 

To  begin  with,  none  of  the  stores  were  incorporated,  and 


NEW  VENTURES  345 

their  liabilities  were  therefore  unlimited.  Though  I  had 
always  felt  it  best  not  to  accept  a  penny  of  interest,  I 
had  been  obliged  to  loan  them  money,  and  their  agent  in 
St.  John's,  who  was  also  mine,  allowed  them  considerable 
latitude  in  credits.  It  was,  indeed,  a  bolt  from  the  blue 
when  I  was  informed  that  the  merchants  in  St.  John's 
were  owed  by  the  stores  the  sum  of  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars,  and  that  I  was  being  held  responsible  for  every 
cent  of  it  —  because  on  the  strength  of  their  faith  in  me, 
and  their  knowledge  that  I  was  interested  in  the  stores, 
having  brought  them  into  being,  they  had  been  willing 
to  let  the  credits  mount  up.  Even  then  I  still  had  all  my 
work  to  carry  on  and  little  time  to  devote  to  money  af- 
fairs. Had  I  accepted,  on  first  entering  the  Mission,  the 
salary  offered  me,  which  was  that  of  my  predecessor,  I 
should  have  been  able  to  meet  these  liabilities,  and  very 
gladly  indeed  would  I  have  done  so.  As  it  was  I  had  to 
find  some  way  out.  All  the  merchants  interested  were  told 
of  the  facts,  and  asked  to  meet  me  at  the  oflSce  of  one  of 
them,  go  over  the  accounts  with  my  agent,  and  try  and 
find  a  plan  to  settle.  One  can  have  little  heart  in  his 
work  if  he  feels  every  one  who  looks  at  him  really  thinks 
that  he  is  a  defaulter.   The  outcome  of  the  inquiry  re- 
vealed that  if  the  agent  could  not  show  which  store  owed 
each  debt,  neither  could  the  merchants;  some  had  made 
out  their  bills  to  separate  stores,  some  all  to  one  store,  and 
some  in  a  general  way  to  myself,  though  not  one  single 
penny  of  the  debt  was  a  personal  one  of  my  own. 

The  next  discovery  was  that  the  manager  of  the  St. 
Anthony  store,  who  had  been  my  summer  secretary  be- 
fore, and  was  an  exceedingly  pious  man  —  whose  great 
zeal  for  cottage  prayer  meetings,  and  that  form  of  relig- 
ious work,  had  led  me  to  think  far  too  highly  of  him  — 
had  neglected  his  books.  He  had  given  credit  to  every  one 


346  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

who  came  along  (though  it  was  a  cardinal  statute  under 
his  rules  that  no  credit  was  to  be  allowed  except  at  his 
own  personal  risk).  The  St.  John's  agent  claimed  that  he 
had  made  a  loss  of  twelve  thousand  dollars  in  a  little  over 
a  year,  in  which  he  professed  to  have  been  able  to  pay 
ten  per  cent  to  shareholders  and  put  by  three  hundred 
dollars  to  reserve.  Besides  this,  the  new  local  store  secre- 
tary had  mixed  up  affairs  by  both  ordering  supplies  direct 
from  Canada  and  sending  produce  there,  which  the  St. 
John's  agent  claimed  were  owed  to  the  merchants  in  that 
city. 

These  two  men,  instead  of  pulling  together,  were,  I 
found,  bitter  enemies ;  and  it  looked  as  if  the  whole  pack 
of  cards  were  tumbling  about  my  ears.  I  cashed  every 
available  personal  asset  which  I  could.  The  beautiful 
schooner,  Emma  E.  White,  also  a  personal  possession, 
arrived  in  St.  John's  while  we  were  there  with  a  full  load 
of  lumber,  but  it  and  she  sailed  straight  into  the  melting- 
pot.  The  merchants,  with  one  exception,  were  all  as  good 
about  the  matter  as  men  can  be.  They  were  perfectly 
satisfied  when  they  realized  that  I  meant  facing  the  debt 
squarely.  One  was  nasty  about  it,  saying  that  he  would 
not  wait  —  and  oddly  enough  in  ordinary  life  he  was  a 
man  whom  one  would  not  expect  to  be  ungenerous,  for  he 
too  was  a  religious  man.  Whether  he  gained  by  it  or  not 
it  is  hard  to  say.  He  was  paid  first,  anyhow.  The  standard 
of  what  is  really  remunerative  in  life  is  differently  graded. 
The  stores  have  dealt  with  him  since,  and  his  prices  are 
fair  and  honest;  but  he  was  the  only  one  among  some 
twenty  who  even  appeared  to  kick  a  man  when  he  was 
down.  I  have  nothing  but  gratitude  to  all  the  rest. 

I  should  add  that  the  incident  was  not  the  fault  of  the 
people  of  the  coast.  Often  I  had  been  warned  by  the  mer- 
chants that  the  cooperative  stores  would  fail  and  that  the 


NEW  VENTURES  347 

people  would  rob  me.  It  is  true  that  there  was  trouble 
over  the  badly  kept  books,  and  a  number  of  the  fishermen 
disclaimed  their  debts  charged  against  them;  but  with 
one  exception  no  one  came  and  said  that  he  had  had 
things  which  were  not  noted  on  the  bills.  I  am  confident, 
however,  that  they  did  not  go  back  on  me  willingly,  and 
when  my  merchant  friends  said,  "I  told  you  so,"  I  hon- 
estly was  able  to  state  that  it  was  the  management,  not 
the  people  or  the  system,  that  was  at  fault.  Indeed,  sub- 
sequent events  have  proved  this.  For  five  of  the  stores 
still  run,  and  run  splendidly,  and  pay  handsomer  divi- 
dends by  far  than  any  investment  our  people  could  pos- 
sibly make  elsewhere. 

With  the  sale  of  a  few  investments  and  some  other 
available  property,  the  liability  was  so  far  reduced  that, 
with  what  the  stores  paid,  only  one  merchant  was  not 
fully  indemnified,  and  he  generously  told  me  not  to 
worry  about  the  balance. 

This  same  year,  on  the  other  hand,  one  of  our  most 
forward  steps,  so  far  as  the  Mission  was  concerned,  was 
taken,  through  the  generosity  of  the  late  Mr.  George  B. 
Cluett,  of  Troy,  New  York.  He  had  built  specially  for  our 
work  a  magnificent  three-masted  schooner,  fitted  with 
the  best  of  gear  including  a  motor  launch.  She  was  con- 
structed of  three-inch  oak  plank,  sheathed  with  hardwood 
for  work  in  the  ice-fields.  She  was  also  fitted  with  an 
eighty  horse-power  Wolverine  engine.  The  bronze  tablet 
in  her  bore  the  inscription,  "This  vessel  with  full  equip- 
ment was  presented  to  Wilfred  T.  Grenfell  by  George  B. 
Cluett."  He  had  previously  asked  me  if  I  would  like  any 
words  from  the  Bible  on  the  plate,  and  I  had  suggested, 
"The  sea  is  His  and  He  made  it."  The  designer  unfortu- 
nately put  the  text  after  the  inscription;  so  that  I  have 
been  frequently  asked  why  and  how  I  came  to  make  it, 


348  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

seeing  that  it  is  believed  by  all  good  Christians  that  in 
heaven  "there  shall  be  no  more  sea." 

To  help  out  with  the  expenses  of  getting  her  running, 
our  loved  friend  from  Chicago,  Mr.  W.  R.  Stirling,  agreed 
to  come  North  on  the  schooner  the  first  season,  bringing 
his  two  daughters  and  three  friends.  Even  though  he  was 
renting  her  for  a  yachting  trip,  he  offered  to  bring  all  the 
cargo  free  and  make  the  Mission  stations  his  ports  of  call. 

Mr.  Cluett's  idea  was  that,  as  we  had  big  expenses 
carrying  endless  freight  so  far  North,  and  as  it  got  so 
broken  and  often  lost  in  transit,  and  greatly  damaged  in 
the  many  changes  involved  from  rail  to  steamer,  and 
from  steamer  to  steamer,  if  she  carried  our  freight  in  sum- 
mer, she  could  in  winter  earn  enough  to  make  it  all  free, 
and  possibly  provide  a  sinking  fund  for  herself  as  well. 
There  was  also  good  accommodation  in  her  for  doctors, 
nurses,  students,  etc.,  who  every  summer  come  from  the 
South  to  help  in  various  ways  in  the  work  of  the  Mission. 

All  our  freight  that  year  arrived  promptly  and  in  good 
condition,  which  had  never  happened  before.  Later  the 
vessel  was  chartered  to  go  to  Greenland  by  the  Smith- 
sonian. On  this  occasion  her  engine,  never  satisfactory, 
gave  out  entirely,  which  so  delayed  her  that  she  got 
frozen  in  near  Etah  and  was  held  up  a  whole  twelve- 
month. Meanwhile  the  war  had  broken  out,  and  when 
she  at  last  sailed  into  Boston,  we  were  able  to  sell  her, 
by  the  generous  permission  of  Mrs.  Cluett,  and  use  the 
money  to  purchase  the  George  B.  Cluett  II. 

Illustrating  the  advantage  of  getting  our  freight  direct, 
among  the  many  instances  which  have  occurred,  that 
of  the  lost  searchHght  for  the  Strathcona  comes  to  my 
mind.  As  she  had  often  on  dark  nights  to  come  to  anchor 
among  vessels,  and  to  nose  her  way  into  unlit  harbours, 
some  friends,  through  the  Professor  of  Geology  at  Har- 


NEW  VENTURES  349 

vard,  who  had  himself  cruised  all  along  our  coast  in  a 
schooner,  presented  me  with  a  searchlight  for  the  hos- 
pital ship  and  despatched  it  via  Sydney  —  the  normal 
freight  route.  Month  after  month  went  by,  and  it  never 
appeared.  Year  followed  year,  and  still  we  searched  for 
that  searchlight.  At  length,  after  two  and  a  half  years, 
it  suddenly  arrived,  having  been  "delayed  on  the  way." 
Had  it  been  provisions  or  clothing  or  drugs,  or  almost 
anything  else,  of  course,  it  would  have  been  useless.  It 
has  proved  to  us  one  of  the  almost  de  luxe  additions  to  a 
Mission  steamer. 

For  a  long  time  I  had  felt  the  need  of  some  place  in  St. 
John's  where  work  for  fishermen  could  be  carried  on,  and 
which  could  be  also  utilized  as  a  place  of  safety  for  girls 
coming  to  that  city  from  other  parts  of  the  island.  My 
attention  was  called  one  day  to  the  fact  that  liquor  was 
being  sent  to  people  in  the  outports  C.O.D.,  by  a  barrel 
of  flour  which  was  being  lowered  over  the  side  of  the  mail 
steamer  rather  too  quickly  on  to  the  ice.  As  the  hard 
bump  came,  the  flour  in  the  barrel  jingled  loudly  and 
leaked  rum  profusely  from  the  compound  fracture.  When 
our  sober  outport  people  went  to  St.  John's,  as  they  must 
every  year  for  supplies,  they  had  only  the  uncomfortable 
schooner  or  the  street  in  which  to  pass  the  time.  There 
is  no  "Foyer  des  Pecheurs";  no  one  wanted  fishermen 
straight  from  a  fishing  schooner  in  the  home;  and  in  those 
days  there  were  no  Camp  Community  Clubs.  As  one  man 
said,  "It  is  easy  for  the  parson  to  tell  us  to  be  good,  but 
it  is  hard  on  a  wet  cold  night  to  be  good  in  the  open 
street"  and  nowhere  to  go,  and  harder  still  if  you  have 
to  seek  shelter  in  a  brightly  lighted  room,  where  music 
was  being  played.  The  boarding-houses  for  the  fishermen, 
where  thousands  of  our  young  men  flocked  in  the  spring 


350  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

to  try  for  a  berth  in  the  seal  fishery,  were  ridiculous,  not 
to  say  calamitous.  Lastly,  unsophisticated  girls  coming 
from  the  outports  ran  terrible  risks  in  the  city,  having  no 
friends  to  direct  and  assist  them;  and  the  Institute  which 
we  had  in  mind  was  to  comprise  also  a  girls'  lodging  de- 
partment. No  provision  was  made  for  the  accommodation 
of  crews  wrecked  by  accident,  and  our  Institute  has  al- 
ready proved  invaluable  to  many  in  such  plights. 

Seeing  the  hundreds  of  craft  and  the  thousands  of  fish- 
ermen, and  the  capital  and  interest  vested  against  us  as 
prohibitionists,  it  would  have  been  obviously  futile  to 
put  up  a  second-rate  affair  in  a  back  street.  It  would  only 
be  sneered  at  as  a  proselytizing  job.  I  had  almost  forgot- 
ten to  mention  that  there  was  already  an  Old  Seamen's 
Home,  but  it  had  gradually  become  a  roost  for  boozers, 
and  when  with  the  trustees  we  made  an  inspection  of  it, 
it  proved  to  be  only  worthy  of  immediate  closure.  This 
was  promptly  done,  and  the  money  realized  from  the  sale 
of  it,  some  ten  thousand  dollars,  was  kindly  donated  to 
the  fund  for  our  new  building. 

After  a  few  years  of  my  collecting  funds  spasmodically, 
a  number  of  our  local  friends  got  "cold  feet."  Reports 
started,  not  circulated  by  well-wishers,  that  it  was  all  a 
piece  of  personal  vanity,  that  no  such  thing  was  needed, 
and  if  built  would  prove  a  white  elephant,  to  support 
which  I  would  be  going  round  with  my  hat  in  my  hand 
worrying  the  merchants.  We  had  at  that  time  some 
ninety  thousand  dollars  in  hand.  I  laid  the  whole  story 
before  the  Governor,  Sir  Ralph  Williams,  a  man  by  no 
means  prejudiced  in  favour  of  prohibition.  He  was,  how- 
ever, one  who  knew  what  the  city  needed,  and  realized 
that  it  was  a  big  lack  and  required  a  big  remedy. 

A  letter  which  I  published  in  all  the  St.  John's  papers, 
describing  my  passing  fifteen  drunken  men  on  the  streets 


NEW  VENTURES  S51 

before  morning  service  on  Christmas  Day,  brought  forth 
angry  denials  of  the  actual  facts,  and  my  statement  of 
the  number  of  saloons  in  the  city  was  also  contradicted. 
But  a  saloon  is  not  necessarily  a  place  licensed  by  the 
Government  or  city  to  make  men  drunk  —  for  the  ma- 
jority are  unlicensed,  and  a  couple  of  experiences  which 
my  men  had  in  looking  for  sailors  who  had  shipped,  been 
given  advances,  and  gone  off  and  got  drunk  in  shebeens, 
proved  the  number  to  be  very  much  higher  than  even  I 
had  estimated  it. 

Sir  Ralph  thought  the  matter  over  and  called  a  public 
meeting  in  the  ballroom  of  Government  House.  He  had  a 
remarkable  personality  and  no  fear  of  conventions.  After 
thoroughly  endorsing  the  plan  for  the  Institute,  and  the 
need  for  it,  he  asked  each  of  the  many  citizens  who  had 
responded  to  his  invitation,  "Will  you  personally  stand 
by  the  larger  scheme  of  a  two  hundred  thousand  dollar 
building,  or  will  you  stand  by  the  sixty  thousand  dollar 
building  with  the  thirty  thousand  dollar  endowment 
fund,  or  will  you  do  nothing  at  all.?"  It  was  proven  that 
when  it  came  to  the  point  of  going  on  record,  practically 
all  who  really  took  the  slightest  interest  in  the  matter 
were  in  favour  of  the  larger  plan  —  if  I  would  undertake 
to  raise  the  money.  My  own  view,  since  more  than  justi- 
fied, was  that  only  so  large  a  building  could  ever  hope  to 
meet  the  requirements  and  only  such  a  comprehensive 
institution  could  expect  to  carry  its  own  expenses.  I  pre- 
ferred refunding  the  ninety  thousand  dollars  to  the  vari- 
ous donors  and  dropping  the  whole  business  to  embarking 
on  the  smaller  scheme. 

That  meeting  did  a  world  of  good.  It  cleared  the  at- 
mosphere; and  it  is  only  fresh  air  which  most  of  these 
things  really  need  —  just  as  does  a  consumptive  patient. 
The  plan  was  now  on  the  shoulders  of  the  citizens;  it  was 


852  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

no  longer  one  man's  hobby.  Enemies,  like  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees  of  old,  knew  better  than  to  tackle  a  crowd,  and 
with  the  splendid  gift  of  Messrs.  Bowring  Brothers  of  a 
site  on  the  water-side  on  the  main  street,  costing  thirteen 
thousand  dollars,  and  those  of  Job  Brothers,  Harvey  and 
Company,  and  Macpherson  Brothers  of  twenty-five  hun- 
dred dollars  each,  the  fund  grew  like  Jonah's  gourd;  and 
in  the  year  of  1911,  with  approximately  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  thousand  dollars  in  hand,  we  actually  came 
to  the  time  for  laying  the  foundation  stone.  The  hostility 
of  enemies  was  not  over.  Such  an  institute  is  a  fighting 
force,  and  involves  contest  and  therefore  enemies.  So  we 
decided  to  make  this  occasion  as  much  of  an  event  as 
we  could.  Through  friends  in  England  we  obtained  the 
promise  of  King  George  V  that  if  we  connected  the  foun- 
dation stone  with  Buckingham  Palace  by  wire,  he  would, 
after  the  ceremony  in  Westminster  Abbey  on  his  Corona- 
tion Day,  press  a  button  at  three  in  the  afternoon  and 
lay  the  stone  across  the  Atlantic.  The  good  services  of 
friends  in  the  Anglo-American  Telegraph  Company  did 
the  rest. 

On  the  fateful  day  His  Excellency  the  Governor  came 
down  and  made  an  appropriate  and  patriotic  speech. 
Owing  to  the  difference  in  time  of  about  three  hours  and 
twenty  minutes,  it  was  shortly  before  twelve  o'clock  with 
us.  The  noonday  gun  signal  from  the  Narrows  was  fired 
during  His  Excellency's  address.  Then  followed  a  prayer 
of  invocation  by  His  Lordship  the  Bishop  of  Newfound- 
land and  Bermuda  —  and  then,  a  dead  silence  and  pause. 
Every  one  was  waiting  for  our  newly  crowned  Eang  to 
put  that  stone  into  place.  Only  a  moment  had  passed,  the 
Governor  had  just  said,  "We  will  wait  for  the  King," 
when  "Bing,  bang,  bang,"  went  the  gong  signifying  that 
His  Majesty  was  at  the  other  end  of  the  wire.  Up  went 


NEW  VENTURES  353 

the  national  flag,  and  slowly  but  surely  the  great  stone 
began  to  move.  A  storm  of  cheering  greeted  the  successful 
effort;  and  all  that  was  left  for  our  enemies  to  say  was, 
"It  was  a  fake."  They  claimed  that  we  had  laid  the  stone 
ourselves.  Nor  might  they  have  been  so  far  off  the  mark 
as  they  supposed,  for  we  had  a  man  with  a  knife  under 
that  platform  to  make  that  stone  come  down  if  anything 
happened  that  the  wire  device  did  not  work.  You  cannot 
go  back  on  your  King  whatever  else  you  do,  and  to  per- 
mit any  grounds  to  exist  for  supposing  that  he  had  not 
been  punctual  was  unthinkable.  But  fortunately  for  all 
concerned  our  subterfuge  was  unnecessary. 

I  have  omitted  so  far  to  state  one  of  the  main  reasons 
why  the  Institute  to  our  mind  was  so  desirable.  That  was 
because  no  undenominational  work  is  carried  on  practi- 
cally in  the  whole  country.  Religion  is  tied  up  in  bundles 
and  its  energies  used  to  divide  rather  than  to  unite  men. 
No  Y.M.C.A.  or  Y.W.C.A.  could  exist  in  the  Colony  for 
that  reason.  The  Boys'  Brigade  which  we  had  originally 
started  could  not  continue,  any  more  than  the  Boy  Scouts 
can  now.  Catholic  Cadets,  Church  Lads  Brigade,  Metho- 
dist Guards,  Presbyterian  Highland  Brigade  —  are  all 
names  symbolic  of  the  dividing  influences  of  "religion." 
In  no  place  of  which  I  know  would  a  Y.M.C.A.  be  more 
desirable;  and  a  large  meeting  held  in  the  Institute  this 
present  spring  decided  that  in  no  town  anywhere  was  a 
Y.W.C.A.  more  needed. 

In  another  place  in  this  book  I  have  spoken  of  the 
problem  of  alcohol  and  fishermen.  A  man  does  not  need 
alcohol  and  is  far  better  without  it.  A  man  who  sees  two 
lights  when  there  is  only  one  is  not  wanted  at  the  wheel. 
The  people  who  sell  alcohol  know  that  just  as  well  as  we 
do,  but  for  paltry  gain  they  are  unpatriotic  enough  to 
barter  their  earthly  country  as  well  as  their  heavenly  one. 


354  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  to  be  branded  with  the  knowledge  that  they  are 
cursing  men  and  ruining  families.  The  filibuster  de- 
serves the  name  no  less  because  he  does  his  destructive 
work  secretly  and  slowly,  and  wears  the  emblems  of  re- 
spectability instead  of  operating  in  the  open  with  "Long 
Toms"  under  the  shadow  of  the  "Jolly  Roger." 

Asa  magistrate  on  this  coast  I  have  been  obliged  more 
than  once  to  act  as  a  policeman,  and  though  one  hated 
the  ill-feeling  which  it  stored  up,  and  did  not  enjoy  the 
evil-speaking  to  which  it  gave  rise,  I  considered  that  it 
was  really  only  like  lancing  a  concealed  infection  —  the 
ill-feeling  and  evil-speaking  were  better  tapped  and  let 
out. 

On  one  occasion  at  one  of  our  Labrador  hospitals  a 
beardless  youth,  one  of  the  Methodist  candidates  for  col- 
lege who  every  year  are  sent  down  to  look  after  the  inter- 
ests of  that  denomination  on  our  North  coast,  came  to  in- 
form me  that  the  only  other  magistrate  on  the  coast,  the 
pillar  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  shortly  to  be  our 
stipendiary,  who  had  many  political  friends  of  great  in- 
fluence in  St.  John's,  was  keeping  a  "blind  tiger,"  while 
many  even  of  his  own  people  were  being  ruined  body  and 
soul  by  this  temptation  under  their  noses. 

"Well,"  I  rephed,  "if  you  will  come  and  give  the 
evidence  which  will  lead  to  conviction,  I  will  do  the 
rest." 

"I  certainly  will,"  he  answered.  And  he  did.  So  we  got 
the  little  Strathcona  under  way,  and  after  steaming  some 
fifteen  miles  dropped  into  a  small  cove  a  mile  or  two 
from  the  place  where  our  friend  lived.  In  the  King's  name 
we  constrained  a  couple  of  men  to  come  along  as  special 
constables.  Our  visit  was  an  unusual  one.  To  divert  sus- 
picion we  dressed  our  ship  in  bunting  as  if  we  were  coming 
for  a  marriage  license.  When  we  anchored  as  near  his 


NEW  VENTURES  355 

stage  as  possible,  we  dropped  our  jolly-boat  and  made 
for  the  store.  The  door  was,  however,  locked  and  our 
friend  nowhere  to  be  seen.  "He  is  in  the  store"  was  the 
reply  of  his  wife  to  our  query.  We  knew  then  that  there 
was  no  time  to  be  lost,  and  even  while  we  battered  at  the 
door,  we  could  hear  a  suspicious  gurgle  and  smell  a  curious 
odour.  Rum  was  trickling  down  through  the  cracks  of  the 
store  floor  on  to  the  astonished  winkles  below.  But  the 
door  quickly  gave  way  before  our  overtures,  and  we 
caught  the  magistrate  ^agrran/e  delicto.  We  were  threat- 
ened with  all  sorts  of  big  folk  in  St.  John's;  but  we  held 
the  trial  on  board  straightaway  just  the  same.  When 
court  was  called,  the  defendant  demanded  the  name  of 
the  prosecutor  —  and  to  his  infinite  surprise  out  popped 
the  youthful  aspirant  to  the  Methodist  ministry.  When 
he  learned  that  half  of  his  fine  of  seventy  dollars  had  to 
be  paid  to  the  prosecutor  and  would  be  applied  toward 
the  building  of  a  Methodist  school,  his  temper  completely 
ran  away  with  him;  and  we  had  to  threaten  auction  on 
the  spot  of  the  goods  in  the  store  before  we  could  collect 
the  money.  We  left  him  breathing  out  threatenings  and 
slaughter. 

Only  once  was  I  really  caught.  Two  mothers  in  a  little 
village  had  appealed  to  me  because  liquor  was  being  sold 
to  their  boys  who  had  no  money,  while  people  were  com- 
plaining simultaneously  that  fish  was  being  stolen  from 
their  stages.  No  one  would  tell  who  was  selling  it,  so  we 
had  a  systematic  search  made  of  all  the  houses,  and  the 
guilty  man  was  convicted  on  evidence  discovered  under 
the  floor  of  his  sitting-room.  The  fine  of  fifty  dollars  he 
paid  without  a  murmur  and  it  was  promptly  divided  be- 
tween the  Government  and  the  prosecutor.  It  so  hap- 
pened, however,  that  he  had  obtained  from  us  for  a  close 
relative  a  new  artificial  leg,  and  there  was  fifty  dollars 


356  A   LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

owing  to  us  on  it.  Unknown  to  us  at  the  time,  he  had  col- 
lected that  fifty  dollars  from  the  said  relative  and  with  it 
paid  his  fine.  To  this  day  we  never  got  a  cent  for  our  leg, 
and  so  really  fined  ourselves.  Nor  could  we  with  any 
propriety  distrain  on  one  of  a  poor  woman's  legs! 


CHAPTER  XXII 

PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA 

The  year  1912  was  a  busy  season.  The  New  Year  found 
us  in  Florida  with  the  donor  of  the  ship  George  B.  Cluett, 
consulting  him  concerning  its  progress  and  future.  Lec- 
turing then  as  we  went  w^est  we  reached  Colorado,  visited 
the  Grand  Canyon,  and  lectured  all  along  the  Pacific 
Coast  from  San  Diego  to  Victoria  —  finding  many  old 
friends  and  making  many  new  ones. 

At  Oaklands  I  was  asked  to  deliver  the  Earle  Lectures 
at  the  University  of  California;  and  I  also  spoke  to  an 
immense  audience  in  the  open  Greek  theatre  —  a  most 
novel  experience.  At  Santa  Barbara  a  special  meeting  had 
been  arranged  by  our  good  friend  Dr.  Joseph  Andrews, 
who  every  year  travels  all  the  way  from  California  to  St. 
Anthony  at  his  own  expense  to  afford  the  fishermen  of 
our  Northern  waters  the  inestimable  benefits  of  his  skill 
as  a  consulting  eye  specialist.  Many  bhnd  he  has  restored 
to  sight  who  would  otherwise  be  encumbrances  to  them- 
selves and  others.  Only  last  year  I  received  the  following 
communication  from  an  eager  would-be  patient:  "Dear 
Dr.  Grandfield,  when  is  the  eye  spider  coming  to  St. 
Anthony?  I  needs  to  see  him  bad." 

While  we  were  at  Tacoma  a  visitor,  saying  that  he  was 
an  old  acquaintance  of  mine,  sent  up  his  card  to  our  room. 
He  had  driven  over  in  a  fine  motor  car,  and  was  a  great, 
broad-shouldered  man.  The  grip  which  he  gave  me  as- 
sured me  that  he  had  been  brought  up  hard,  but  I  utterly 
failed  to  place  him.  With  a  broad  grin  he  relieved  the  sit- 
uation by  saying:  "The  last  time  that  we  met.  Doctor, 
was  on  the  deck  of  a  fishing  vessel  in  the  North  Sea.  I  was 


S58  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

second  hand  aboard,  sailing  out  from  Grimsby."  The 
tough  surroundings  of  that  life  were  such  a  contrast  to  his 
present  apparently  ample  means  that  I  could  only  say, 
*'How  on  earth  did  you  get  out  here?" 

"A  friend,"  said  he,  "gave  me  a  little  book  entitled 
*One  Hundred  Ways  to  Rise  in  the  World.'  The  first 
ninety-nine  were  no  good  to  me,  but  the  hundredth  said, 
*Go  to  Western  America,'  so  I  just  cleared  out  and  came 
here."  He  was  exceedingly  kind  to  us,  even  accompanying 
us  to  Seattle,  and  his  story  of  pluck  and  enterprise  was  a 
splendid  stimulus. 

Six  weeks  of  lecturing  nearly  every  single  night  in  a 
new  town  in  Canada  gave  me  a  real  vision  of  Canadian 
Western  life,  and  a  sincere  admiration  for  its  people  who 
are  making  a  nation  of  which  the  world  is  proud. 

In  April  a  large  meeting  was  held  in  New  York  to  re- 
organize the  management  of  the  Mission.  The  English 
Royal  National  Mission  to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen  was  no 
longer  able  or  willing  to  finance,  much  less  to  direct, 
affairs  which  had  gone  beyond  their  control,  and  was  hop- 
ing to  arrange  an  organization  of  an  international  char- 
acter to  which  all  the  affairs  of  the  enterprise  could  be 
turned  over.  This  organization  was  formed  at  the  house 
of  Mr.  Eugene  Delano,  the  head  of  Brown  Brothers, 
bankers,  whose  lifelong  help  has  meant  for  Labrador 
more  than  he  will  ever  know. 

The  International  Grenfell  Association  was  incorpo- 
rated to  comprise  the  Labrador  branches  of  the  Royal 
National  Mission  to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen  as  its  English 
component,  the  Grenfell  Association  of  America  and  the 
New  England  Grenfell  Association  to  represent  the  Amer- 
ican interests,  the  Labrador  Medical  Mission  as  the  Cana- 
dian name  for  its  Society,  and  the  Newfoundland  Gren- 
fell Association  for  the  Newfoundland  branch.  Each  one 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         359 

of  these  component  societies  has  two  members  in  the 
Central  Council,  and  together  they  make  up  the  Board 
of  Directors  of  the  International  Grenfell  Association. 
These  directors  ever  since  have  generously  been  giving 
their  time  and  interest  in  the  wise  and  eflScient  adminis- 
tration of  this  work.  To  these  unselfish  men  Labrador 
and  northern  Newfoundland,  as  well  as  I,  owe  a  greater 
debt  than  can  ever  be  repaid. 

On  the  1st  of  May  I  was  due  to  speak  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  English  Mission  in  London,  and  the  swift 
heels  of  the  Mauretania  once  more  stood  us  in  good  stead; 
for  we  reached  England  the  evening  before  May  1,  ar- 
rived in  London  at  2  a.m.,  and  I  spoke  three  times  that 
day.  After  a  day  or  so  at  my  old  home  with  my  mother  we 
ran  about  in  a  Ford  car  for  a  fortnight,  lecturing  every 
evening.  The  little  motor  saved  endless  energy  otherwise 
lost  in  endeavouring  to  make  connections,  and  gave  us 
the  opportunity  to  see  numbers  of  old  friends  whom  we 
must  otherwise  have  missed.  One  day  we  would  be  at  a 
meeting  of  miners  at  Redmuth  in  Cornwall,  on  another 
at  Harrow  or  Rugby  Schools.  At  the  latter,  an  old  college 
friend,  who  is  now  head  master  there,  gave  us  a  royal 
welcome.  During  the  last  fortnight  at  home  a  splendid 
chance  was  afforded  me  to  visit  daily  the  clinics  of  an  old 
friend,  Sir  Robert  Jones,  England's  famous  orthopedic 
surgeon.  He  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  and  practical 
of  men,  and  he  opened  our  eyes  to  the  possibility  of  med- 
ical mission  work  in  the  very  heart  of  England  —  for  if 
ever  there  was  an  apostle  of  hope  for  the  deformed  and 
paralyzed  he  certainly  is  the  man.  His  Sunday  morning 
free  clinics  crowded  even  the  street  opposite  his  oflace 
door  with  waiting  patients  of  the  poorest  class.  Equally 
beneficent  also  is  the  large  and  wonderful  hospital  built 
specially  for  derelict  children  on  the  heather-covered  hills 


360  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

just  above  our  home  in  Cheshire.  But  most  unique  of  all 
was  his  Basschurch  Hospital,  constructed  mostly  of  sheet 
iron,  standing  in  the  middle  of  a  field  in  the  country  forty 
miles  away  from  Liverpool.  Every  second  Sunday,  Sir 
Robert  Jones  used  to  motor  over  there  and  operate  "in 
the  field."  No  expedition  have  I  ever  enjoyed  better  in 
my  life  than  when  he  was  good  enough  to  pick  us  up  on 
his  way,  and  we  saw  him  tackle  the  motley  collection  of 
halt  and  lame,  whom  the  lady  of  the  hospital,  herself  a 
marvellous  testimony  to  his  skill,  collected  from  the 
neighbouring  town  slums  between  his  visits.  The  hospital 
was  the  nearest  thing  I  know  to  our  little  "one-horse 
shows"  scattered  along  the  Labrador  coast;  and  there 
was  a  homing  feeling  in  one's  heart  all  the  time  at  these 
open-air  clinics. 

As  commander-in-chief  of  the  orthopedic  work  of  the 
British  Army  in  the  war,  I  am  certain  that  Colonel  Sir 
Robert  Jones  has  found  the  experiences  of  his  improvised 
clinics  among  the  most  valuable  assets  he  could  have  had. 
One  day  he  has  promised  that  he  will  bring  his  magic 
wand  to  Labrador;  for  he  is  a  sportsman  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word  as  well  as  a  healer  of  limbs. 

The  quickest  way  back  to  St.  John's  being  via  Canada, 
we  returned  by  the  Allan  Line,  and  lectured  in  the 
Maritime  Provinces  as  we  passed  North. 

It  would  appear  that  one  must  possess  an  insatiable 
love  of  lecturing.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  nothing  is  farther 
from  the  truth.  But  the  brevity  of  life  is  an  insistent  fact 
in  our  existence,  and  the  inability  to  do  good  work  for 
lack  of  help  that  is  so  gladly  given  when  the  reasonable- 
ness of  the  expenditure  is  presented,  makes  one  feel 
guilty  if  an  evening  is  spent  doing  nothing.  The  lecturing 
is  by  far  the  most  uncongenial  task  which  I  have  been 
called  upon  to  do  in  life,  but  in  a  mission  like  ours,  which 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         861 

is  not  under  any  special  church,  the  funds  must  be  raised 
to  a  very  great  extent  by  voluntary  donations,  and  in 
order  to  secure  these  friends  must  be  kept  informed  of 
the  progress  of  the  work  which  their  gifts  are  making 
possible. 

For  the  first  seven  years  of  my  work  I  never  spent  the 
winters  in  the  country  —  nor  was  it  my  intention  ever  to 
do  so.  Besides  the  general  direction  of  the  whole,  my  work 
as  superintendent  has  meant  the  raising  of  the  necessary 
funds,  and  my  special  charge  on  the  actual  coast  has  been 
the  hospital  ship  Strathcona.  Naturally,  owing  to  our 
frozen  winter  sea  this  is  only  possible  during  open  water. 
Since  1902  it  has  been  my  custom  when  possible  to  spend 
every  other  winter  as  well  as  every  summer  in  the  North. 
The  actual  work  and  life  there  is  a  tremendous  rest  after 
the  nervous  and  physical  tax  of  a  lecture  tour.  At  first 
I  used  to  wonder  at  the  lack  of  imagination  in  those  who 
would  greet  me,  after  some  long,  wearisome  hours  on  the 
train  or  in  a  crowded  lecture  hall,  with  "What  a  lovely 
holiday  you  are  having!"  Now  this  oft-repeated  com- 
ment only  amuses  me. 

It  was  just  after  the  first  of  June  when  again  we  found 
ourselves  heading  North  for  St.  Anthony,  only  once  more 
to  be  caught  in  the  jaws  of  winter.  For  the  heavy  Arctic 
ice  blockaded  the  whole  of  the  eastern  French  shore,  and 
we  had  to  be  content  to  be  held  up  in  small  ice-bound 
harbours  as  we  pushed  along  through  the  inner  edge  of 
the  floe,  till  strong  westerly  winds  cleared  the  way. 

Having  reached  St.  Anthony  and  looked  into  matters 
there,  we  once  again  ran  south  to  St.  John's  to  inspect  the 
new  venture  of  the  Institute.  To  help  out  expenses  we 
towed  for  the  whole  four  hundred  miles  a  schooner  which 
had  been  wrecked  on  the  Labrador  coast,  having  run  on 
the  rocks,  aud  knocked  a  hole  in  her  bottom.  She  had  a 


362  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

number  of  sacks  of  "hard  bread"  on  board.  These  had 
been  thrown  into  the  breach  and  planking  nailed  on  over 
them.  The  bread  had  swelled  up  between  the  two  casings 
and  become  so  hard  again  that  the  vessel  leaked  but  lit- 
tle; and  though  the  continual  dirge  of  the  pumps  was 
somewhat  dismal  as  we  journeyed,  we  had  no  reason  to 
fear  that  she  would  go  to  the  bottom. 

Flour  resists  water  in  a  marvellous  way.  On  one  occa- 
sion our  own  vessel  in  the  North  Sea  was  run  into  by  an- 
other. The  latter's  cutwater  went  through  her  side  and 
deck  almost  to  the  combing  of  the  hatch,  and  the  water 
began  to  pour  in.  By  immediately  putting  the  vessel  on 
the  other  tack,  the  rent  was  largely  lifted  out  of  water. 
A  heavy  topsail  was  hastily  thrown  over  her  side,  and 
eventually  hauled  under  the  keel  —  the  inrushing  water 
keeping  it  there.  Then  sacks  of  flour  were  rammed  into 
the  breach.  The  ship  in  this  condition,  favoured  by  the 
wind  which  enabled  her  to  continue  on  that  tack,  reached 
home,  two  hundred  miles  distant,  with  her  hand-pumps 
keeping  her  comparatively  free,  though  there  was  the 
greatest  difficulty  to  keep  her  afloat  directly  she  was 
towed  into  the  harbour  and  lay  at  the  wharf. 

On  another  occasion  when  a  Canadian  steamer,  loaded 
with  provisions,  ran  into  a  cliff  two  hundred  feet  high  in 
a  fog  on  the  northeast  end  of  Belle  Isle,  and  became  a 
total  wreck,  her  flour  floated  all  up  and  down  the  Straits. 
I  remember  picking  up  a  sack  that  had  certainly  been  in 
the  water  some  weeks;  and  yet  only  about  a  quarter  of 
an  inch  of  outside  layer  was  even  wet. 

The  opening  of  the  Institute  was  a  great  day.  Dr. 
Henry  van  Dyke  had  come  all  the  way  from  New  York 
to  give  an  address.  Sir  William  Archibald,  chairman  of 
the  Royal  National  Mission  to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen,  had 
travelled  from  England  to  bring  a  blessing  from  the  old 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         363 

home  country;  and  the  merchants  and  friends  in  St.  John's 
did  their  best  to  make  it  a  red-letter  day.  Sir  Edward 
Morris,  the  Prime  Minister,  and  other  poHticians,  the 
Mayor  and  civic  functionaries  were  all  good  enough  to 
come  and  add  their  quota  to  the  launching  of  the  new 
ship.  There  were  still  pessimistic  and  croaking  individuals, 
however,  as  well  as  joyful  hearts,  when  a  few  days  later 
we  again  ran  North. 

We  started  almost  immediately  for  our  Straits  trip 
after  reaching  St.  Anthony.  On  our  way  east  from  Har- 
rington, our  most  westerly  hospital,  commenced  in  1907, 
a  telegram  summoning  me  immediately  to  St.  John's 
dropped  upon  me  like  a  bolt  from  the  blue.  Without  a 
moment's  delay  we  headed  yet  again  South,  full  of  anx- 
iety as  to  what  could  be  the  cause  of  this  message. 

On  arrival  there  we  found  that  trouble  had  arisen  con- 
cerning the  funds  of  the  Institute  and  a  prosecution  was 
to  follow.  It  was  the  worst  time  of  my  life.  Things  were 
readjusted;  the  money  was  refunded,  punishment  meted 
out  —  but  such  damage  is  not  made  right  by  reconstruc- 
tion. It  left  permanent  scars  and  made  the  end  of  an  other- 
wise splendid  year  anxious  and  sorrowful. 

The  work  on  East  Labrador  was  also  extended  this  year. 
While  walking  down  the  street  in  New  York  with  a  young 
doctor  friend  who  had  once  wintered  with  me,  we  met  a 
colleague  of  his  at  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons. 
In  the  conversation  it  was  suggested  that  he  should 
spend  a  summer  in  Labrador,  and  we  would  place  him 
in  a  virgin  field.  As  a  result  Dr.  Wiltsie,  now  in  China, 
came  North,  started  in  work  with  a  little  school,  club,  and 
dispensary,  at  a  place  called  Spotted  Islands,  in  a  very 
barren  group  of  islands  about  a  hundred  miles  north  of 
the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle.  His  work  became  permanent  as 
the  summer  mission  of  the  Y.M.C.A.  of  the  College,  which 


364  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

organization  now  carries  all  its  expenses.  It  has  a  dwelling- 
house,  school,  dispensary,  small  operating  room,  and  ac- 
commodation for  a  couple  of  patients,  all  under  one  roof, 
and  owns  a  fast  motor  boat  called  the  P.  and  S.,  which  has 
made  itself  known  as  an  angel  of  mercy,  every  summer 
since,  over  a  hundred  miles  of  coast  and  islands.  It  is  only 
a  summer  work,  and  is  mainly  among  a  schooner  popu- 
lation; but  as  a  testimonial  to  the  value  of  pluck  and 
unselfishness  I  know  of  no  better  example. 

Among  other  ways  to  help  Labrador  we  had  always 
tried  to  induce  tourists  and  yachtsmen  to  come  and  visit 
us.  Mr.  Rainey's  Surf,  Mr.  McCready's  Enchantress,  Dr. 
Stimson's  Fleur  de  Lys,  Mr.  Arthur  James's  Aloha,  and 
a  few  other  yachts  had  come  part  of  the  way,  but  no  one 
had  yet  explored  north  of  Hopedale  —  the  latitude  at 
which  the  fine  Northern  scenery  may  be  said  only  to  be- 
gin. The  large  power  vessels  or  even  the  best  type  of  yacht 
are  by  no  means  necessary  for  a  visit  to  Labrador.  For 
the  innumerable  fjords  and  islands  make  it  much  more 
interesting  to  be  in  a  smaller  boat,  which  allows  one  to  go 
freely  in  and  out  of  new  by-ways,  even  when  the  survey 
is  only  that  of  your  own  maldng.  The  most  sporting  visits 
of  that  kind  have  been  the  honeymoon  of  a  Philadelphia 
friend,  who,  with  his  wife,  one  man,  and  a  canoe,  went 
by  river  to  James's  Bay,  then  via  Hudson  Bay  to  Rich- 
mond Gulf,  then  by  portage  and  river  to  Ungava  Bay, 
and  thence  home  by  way  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's 
steamer;  the  canoe  trips  of  Mr.  Kennedy  all  along  the 
outside  eastern  coast,  and  those  of  Mr.  William  Cabot 
on  the  section  of  the  northeastern  coast  between  Hope- 
dale  and  Nain.  In  this  year  of  1912  a  new  little  yacht 
appeared,  the  Sybil,  brought  down  from  Boston  by  her 
owner,  Mr.  George  Williams.  I  had  promised  that  if  ever 
he  would  sail  down  to  see  us  in  his  own  boat,  we  would 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         365 

escort  him  up  a  salmon  river  for  a  fishing  expedition  —  a 
luxury  which  we  certainly  never  anticipated  would  ma- 
terialize. But  on  arriving  North,  there  was  the  beautiful 
little  boat;  and  in  it  we  sailed  up  into  the  fine  salmon 
stream  in  the  bay  close  to  the  hospital.  Subsequently  Mr. 
Williams  came  year  after  year,  pushing  farther  North  each 
time.  The  Sybil  he  eventually  gave  to  the  Mission,  and 
built  a  large  boat,  the  Jeanette,  in  which  I  had  the  pleas- 
ure later  of  exploring  with  him  and  roughly  charting  three 
hitherto  unrecorded  bays. 

One  unusual  feature  of  our  magisterial  work  in  1912 
was  the  settlement  of  a  fisherman's  strike  "down  North.'* 
It  would  at  first  seem  difficult  to  understand  how  fisher- 
men could  engineer  a  strike,  they  are  so  good-natured  and 
so  long-suffering.  But  this  time  it  was  over  the  price  of 
fish,  naturally  a  matter  of  immense  importance  to  the 
catcher.  The  planters,  or  men  who  give  advances  to  come 
and  fish  around  the  mouth  of  Hamilton  Inlet,  were  to 
ship  their  fish  on  a  steamer  coming  direct  from  England 
and  returning  direct —  thus  saving  delay  and  very  great 
expense.  But  the  price  did  not  please  the  men,  and  they 
knew  if  they  once  put  the  fish  on  board  at  $3.50  per  quin- 
tal, the  amount  offered,  they  would  never  recover  the 
$5,  which  was  the  price  for  which  fish  was  selling  in  St. 
John's  that  year.  The  more  masterful  men  decided  that 
not  only  would  they  not  put  the  fish  on  board  till  they 
had  cash  orders  or  Revillon  agreements  for  their  price, 
but  they  would  not  allow  any  of  the  weaker  brethren  to 
do  so  either.  There  were  but  few  hard  words  and  no  vio- 
lent deeds,  but  when  one  blackleg  was  seen  to  go  along- 
side the  waiting  steamer,  which  was  costing  a  hundred 
dollars  a  day  to  the  fish-carrying  merchant,  a  crowd  of 
boats  dashed  out  from  creeks  and  corners  and  pounced 
like  a  vulture  on  the  big  boat,  fat  with  a  fine  load  of  fish, 


S66  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

and  not  only  towed  her  away  and  tied  her  up,  but  hauled 
her  out  of  the  water  with  the  cargo  and  all  in  her,  and 
dragged  her  so  far  up  the  side  of  a  steep  hill  that  the 
owner  was  utterly  unable  without  assistanqe  to  get  her 
down  again. 

Each  day  we  had  a  conference  with  one  side  or  the 
other,  the  Government  having  asked  us  to  remain  and 
see  things  settled.  While  each  side  was  fencing  for  an  ad- 
vantage, a  good-sized  schooner  sailed  into  the  harbour, 
brought  up  alongside  the  steamer,  and  was  seen  to  begin 
unloading  dry  fish.  A  dash  was  made  for  her  by  the  boats 
as  before;  only  this  time  it  was  the  attack  of  Lilliputians 
on  Gulliver.  We  on  the  shore  could  not  help  laughing 
heartily  when  shortly  we  saw  a  string  of  over  a  dozen  fish- 
ing boats  harnessed  tandem  in  one  long  line  towing  the 
interloper  —  as  they  had  the  blackleg  —  away  up  the  in- 
let where  they  moored  and  guarded  her.  It  appeared  that 
the  buyer  had  sent  her  to  a  far-off  anchorage,  and  un- 
known to  the  strikers  had  had  fish  put  into  her  there. 
The  steamer  might  have  followed  and  got  away  with  the 
ruse.  But  the  skipper  underestimated  the  enemy,  always 
a  fatal  mistake,  and  lost  out. 

The  agreement  made  a  day  or  so  later  was  perfectly 
peaceful,  and  perfectly  satisfactory  to  both  sides,  for  the 
fish  turned  out  a  good  price,  and  the  buyer  did  not  lose 
anything  on  the  transaction  but  the  demurrage  on  his 
steamer  and  a  little  kudos,  which  I  must  confess  he  took 
in  very  good  spirit.  Even  if  he  did  have  a  grasping  side 
to  his  character,  he  was  fortunate  in  possessing  a  sense 
of  humour  also. 

The  fall  brought  yet  another  call  to  go  South  to  St. 
John's,  and  once  more  in  the  Httle  Strath cona  we  ploughed 
our  way  through  the  long  miles  to  the  southward.  This 
time  it  was  for  the  reorganization  of  the  Institute  govern- 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         367 

ment,  to  form  a  council  and  to  install  the  new  manager 
from  England.  This  was  Mr.  Walter  Jones,  a  man  whose 
wide  experience  among  naval  "  Jackies"  had  been  gained 
in  a  large  institute  of  much  the  same  kind.  This  gave  him 
the  credentials  which  we  needed,  for  he  had  made  it  not 
only  a  social  but  an  economic  success.  He  has  been 
much  sought  by  the  various  churches  in  St.  John's  as  a 
speaker  to  men,  and  his  Sunday  evening  lantern  services 
and  lectures  at  the  Institute  are  a  real  source  of  uplift 
and  help  to  men  of  every  religious  denomination. 

The  fall  of  the  year  was  very  busy.  Dr.  Seymour  Arm- 
strong, formerly  surgical  registrar  at  the  Charing  Cross 
Hospital  in  London,  an  able  surgeon,  and  a  man  of  inde- 
pendent means,  joined  me  for  that  winter  at  St.  Anthony. 
He  had  already  wintered  twice  at  our  Labrador  hospitals, 
and  was  fully  expecting  to  give  us  much  further  help,  but 
two  years  later  the  great  war  found  him  at  the  front, 
where  he  gladly  laid  down  his  life  for  his  country. 

One  sick  call  that  winter  lives  in  my  memory.  It  was  a 
case  where  a  nurse  was  really  more  needed  than  a  doctor. 
The  way  was  long,  the  wind  was  cold,  and  the  snow  hap- 
pened to  be  particularly  deep.  One  of  the  nurses,  however, 
volunteered  for  the  journey,  and  I  arranged  to  carry  her 
on  a  second  komatik,  while  my  driver  broke  the  path  with 
our  impedimenta.  Things  did  not  go  altogether  well. 
Since  I  have  enjoyed  the  luxury  of  a  driver,  or  a  "carter" 
as  we  call  them,  my  cunning  in  wriggling  a  komatik  at 
full  speed  down  steep  mountain-sides  through  trees  has 
somewhat  waned.  Comparatively  early  in  the  day  we 
looped  the  loop  —  and  we  were  both  heavy  weights.  It 
was  nearly  dark  when  we  reached  the  last  lap  —  an  enor- 
mous bay  with  a  direct  run  of  seven  miles  over  sea  ice.  We 
should  probably  have  made  it  all  right,  but  suddenly 
fog  drifted  in  from  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  and  steering 


S68  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

with  a  small  compass  and  no  binnacle,  while  attending 
to  hauling  a  heavy  nurse  over  hummocky  sea  ice  in  the 
dark,  satisfied  all  my  ambition  for  problems.  At  length 
the  nature  of  the  ice  indicated  that  we  were  approaching 
either  land  or  the  sea  edge.  We  stopped  the  komatiks, 
and  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  go  ahead  and  explore.  Finding 
nothing  I  called  to  the  driver,  and  his  voice  returned  out 
of  the  fog  right  ahead  of  me,  and  almost  in  my  ear.  I  had 
told  them  not  to  move  or  we  might  miss  our  way,  and  I 
reminded  him  of  that  fact.  "Have  n't  budged  an  inch" 
came  the  reply  from  the  darkness.  I  had  been  describing 
a  large  circle.  I  can  still  hear  that  nurse  laughing. 

At  last  we  struck  the  huge  blocks  of  ice,  raised  on  the 
boulder  rocks  by  the  rise  and  fall  of  tide  in  shallow  water, 
and  we  knew  that  we  should  make  the  land.  The  perver- 
sity of  nature  made  us  turn  the  wrong  way  for  the  village 
toward  which  we  were  aiming,  and  we  found  ourselves 
"tangled  up"  in  the  Boiling  Brooks,  a  place  where  some 
underground  springs  keep  holes  open  through  the  ice  all 
winter.  Suddenly,  while  marching  ahead  with  the  com- 
pass, seeking  to  avoid  these  springs,  the  ground  being 
level  enough  for  the  nurse  to  act  as  her  own  helmsman,  a 
tremendous  "whurr!  whurr!"  under  my  feet  restored 
sufficient  leaping  power  to  my  weary  legs  to  leave  me 
head  down  and  only  my  racquets  out  of  the  snow  —  all 
for  a  covey  of  white  partridges  on  which  I  had  nearly  trod- 
den. At  length  we  made  a  tiny  winter  cottage.  The  nurse 
slept  on  the  bench,  the  doctor  on  the  floor,  the  driver  on 
a  shelf.  Our  generous  host  had  almost  to  hang  himself 
on  a  hook.  The  dogs  went  hungry.  But  as  we  boiled  our 
kettle,  all  agreed  that  we  would  not  have  exchanged  the 
experience  for  ten  rides  in  a  Pullman  Car. 

Largely  through  the  zeal  of  my  colleague,  Dr.  Arthur 
Wakefield,  of  Kendal,  England,  and  that  of  my  cousin, 


On  the  Way  Home 


Carrying  a  Sick  Dog 
DOG  TRAVEL 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         369 

Mr.  Martyn  Spencer,  of  New  Zealand,  a  band  of  the 
Legion  of  Frontiersmen  had  been  brought  into  being  all 
along  this  section  of  coast,  in  spite  of  the  scattered  nature 
of  the  population.  The  idea  was  that  having  to  depend 
so  largely  on  the  use  of  their  guns,  and  being  excellent 
shots  with  a  bullet,  the  men  would  make  good  snipers  and 
scouts  if  ever  there  were  war.  True,  most  of  our  people 
called  it  "playing  soldiers,"  and  no  one  took  seriously 
that  we  were  ever  likely  to  be  called  upon  to  fight;  but 
all  Dr.  Wakefield's  hopes  and  fears  were  realized  and  our 
lads  made  both  brave  soldiers  and  excellent  marksmen. 

Dr.  and  Mrs.  Wakefield  have  given  several  years  of 
both  medical  and  industrial  work  for  the  people  of  this 
coast,  both  in  St.  Anthony,  Forteau,  Mud  Lake,  and 
Battle  Harbour. 

Alas,  the  functions  of  superintendent  involved  execu- 
tive duties,  and  I  had  once  again  to  run  to  St.  John's, 
during  the  following  summer,  for  a  meeting  of  the  Board 
of  Directors.  With  true  Christian  unselfishness  these  men 
come  all  the  way  from  Ottawa,  New  York,  and  Boston,  to 
help  with  their  counsel  so  relatively  unimportant  a  work 
as  ours.  Sir  Walter  Davidson  again  lent  his  heartiest  co- 
operation. The  people  owe  him.  Sir  Herbert  Murray,  Sir 
Henry  MacCallum,  Sir  William  MacGregor,  Sir  Ralph 
Wilhams,  Sir  Alexander  Harris,  and  all  the  long  line  of 
their  Governors,  more  than  most  of  them  realize.  They 
bring  all  the  inspiration  of  the  best  type  of  educated, 
widely  experienced,  and  travelled  Englishmen  to  this 
Colony.  They  are  specially  trained  and  specially  selected 
men,  and  can  give  their  counsel  and  leadership  abso- 
lutely untrammelled  by  any  local  prejudices. 

One  excellent  outcome  of  this  particular  meeting  was 
the  reorganization  on  a  larger  scale  of  the  Girls'  Commit- 
tee for  the  Lastitute.  The  success  of  it  has  been  phenom- 


370  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

enal.  Together  with  its  protective  work  it  has  aimed  at 
that  most  difficult  task  of  creating  in  them  sufficient  am- 
bition to  make  the  girls  receiving  very  small  wages  want 
to  pay  for  a  better  environment.  The  committee  has  al- 
ways been  strictly  interdenominational,  with  Mrs.  W.  C. 
Job  and  Mrs.  W.  E.  Gosling  as  its  presidents.  It  has  made 
a  "  show  place  "  of  the  Girls'  Department  of  the  Institute, 
and  that  department  has  become  self-supporting  —  a 
most  desirable  goal  for  every  philanthropy. 

The  lumber  mill  and  schooner  building  work  were  in 
slings.  Our  men,  made  far  better  off  by  the  winter  work 
thus  provided,  had  acquired  gear  so  much  better  for 
fishing  than  their  former  equipment  that  they  could  not 
resist  engaging  in  the  more  remunerative  work  of  the  fish- 
ery in  the  summer  months.  For  two  years  previous  they 
had  left  before  the  drive  was  complete  and  the  logs  out 
of  the  woods.  Now  the  local  manager  had  also  decided  to 
fish  during  the  three  summer  months  —  which  is  really 
the  only  time  available  for  mill  operations  also.  I  was 
fortunate  enough  on  my  way  North  to  persuade  an  expert 
lumber  operator  from  Canada,  and  an  entirely  kindred 
spirit,  Mr.  Harry  Crowe,  to  come  down  and  help  me  out 
with  the  problem.  We  spent  a  few  delightful  days  to- 
gether, in  which  he  taught  me  as  many  things  that  every 
mill  man  should  know  as  he  would  have  had  to  learn  had 
he  been  dabbling  in  pills.  Like  myself,  Mr.  Crowe  is  an 
ardent  believer  in  Confederation  with  Canada  for  this  little 
country.  Before  Mr.  Crowe's  efforts  on  our  behalf  had  ma- 
terialized, a  new  friend,  Mr.  Walter  Booth,  of  New  York, 
well  known  in  American  football  circles  as  one  of  the  best 
of  ail-American  forwards,  came  North  and  carried  the  mill 
for  a  year.  The  one  and  only  fault  of  his  regime  was  that 
it  was  too  short.  The  field  of  work  was  one  for  which  he  was 
admirably  equipped,  but  home  reasons  made  him  return 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         371 

after  his  time  expired.  He  has  often  told  me  since,  how- 
ever, that  he  has  fits  of  wishing  that  he  could  have  put  in 
a  life  with  us  in  the  North,  rather  than  spending  it  in  the 
more  civilized  circles  of  the  New  York  Bar. 

Many  invitations  to  speak,  especially  at  universities 
in  America,  and  through  a  lecture  agency  in  England  to 
numerous  societies  and  clubs,  led  me  to  devote  the  winter 
of  1913-14  to  a  lecture  tour.  My  wife  induced  me  also  to 
renew  my  youth  by  a  holiday  of  a  month  on  the  Conti- 
nent. 

A  lecture  tour  includes  some  of  the  most  delightful  ex- 
periences of  life,  bringing  one  into  direct  personal  contact 
with  so  many  people  whom  it  is  a  privilege  to  know.  But 
it  also  has  its  anxieties  and  worries,  and  eternal  vigilance 
is  the  price  of  avoiding  a  breakdown  at  this  the  most 
diflScult  of  all  my  work.  One's  memory  is  taxed  far  be- 
yond its  capacity.  To  forget  some  things,  and  some  people 
and  some  kindnesses,  are  unforgivable  sins.  A  new  host 
every  night,  a  new  home,  a  new  city,  a  new  audience, 
alone  lead  one  into  lamentable  lapses.  In  a  car  full  of  people 
a  man  asked  me  one  day  how  I  liked  Toledo.  I  replied 
that  I  had  never  been  there.  "Strange,"  he  murmured, 
*'  because  you  spent  the  night  at  my  house ! "  On  another 
occasion  at  a  crowded  reception  I  was  talking  to  a  lady 
on  one  side  and  a  gentleman  on  the  other.  I  had  been  in- 
troduced to  them,  but  caught  neither  name.  They  did 
not  address  each  other,  but  only  spoke  to  me.  I  felt  that 
I  must  remedy  matters  by  making  them  acquainted  with 
each  other,  and  therefore  mumbled,  "Pray  let  me  pre- 
sent to  you  Mrs.  M-m-m."  "Oh!  no  need,  Doctor,"  he 
replied.  "We've  been  married  for  thirty  years."  Shortly 
after  I  noticed  at  a  reception  that  every  one  wore  his 
name  pinned  onto  his  breast,  and  I  wondered  if  there  were 
any  connection. 


372  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

It  is  my  invariable  custom  in  the  North  to  carry  a 
water-tight  box  with  matches  and  a  compass  chained  to 
my  belt.  One  night,  being  tired,  I  had  turned  into  bed  in  a 
very  large,  strange  room  without  noting  the  bearings  of 
the  doors  or  electric  switches.  My  faithful  belt  had  been 
abandoned  for  pyjama  strings.  It  so  happened  that  to 
catch  a  train  I  had  to  rise  before  daylight,  and  all  my 
possessions  were  in  a  dressing-room.  I  soon  gave  up 
hunting  for  the  electric  hght.  It  was  somewhere  in  the  air, 
I  knew,  but  beating  the  air  in  the  dark  with  the  windows 
wide  open  in  winter  is  no  better  fun  in  your  nightclothes 
in  New  York  than  in  Labrador.  A  tour  of  inspection  dis- 
covered no  less  than  five  doors,  none  of  which  I  felt  en- 
titled to  enter  in  the  dark  in  deshabille.  The  humour  of 
the  situation  is,  of  course,  apparent  now,  but  even  one's 
dog  hates  to  be  laughed  at. 

An  independent  life  has  somehow  left  me  with  an  in- 
stinctive dislike  for  asldng  casual  acquaintances  the  way 
to  any  place  that  I  am  seeking.  The  aversion  is  more  or 
less  justified  by  the  fact  that  outside  the  police  force  very 
exceptional  persons  can  direct  you,  especially  if  they  know 
the  way  themselves.  On  my  first  visit  to  New  York  I 
could  see  how  easy  a  city  it  was  to  navigate,  and  returned 
to  my  host's  house  near  Eighth  Street  in  good  time  to 
dress  for  dinner  after  a  long  side  trip  near  Columbia 
University  and  thence  to  the  Bellevue  Hospital.  "How 
did  you  find  your  way.^*"  my  friend  asked.  "Why,  there 
was  sufficient  sky  visible  to  let  me  see  the  North  Star," 
I  answered.  I  felt  almost  hurt  when  he  laughed.  It  is 
natural  for  a  polar  bear  not  to  have  to  inquire  the  way 
home. 

The  aphorism  attributed  to  Dr.  John  Watson,  of  "Be- 
side the  Bonnie  Briar  Bush,"  suggests  itself.  "My  fee  is 
one  hundred  dollars  if  I  go  to  a  hotel,  two  hundred  if  I 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         373 

am  entertained,  because  in  the  latter  event  one  can  only 
live  half  so  long."  I  conclude  that  he  made  the  choice 
of  Achilles,  for  he  died  on  a  lecture  tour.  So  far  fate  has 
been  kinder  to  me. 

The  greatest  danger  is  the  reporter,  especially  the  emo- 
tional reporter,  who  has  not  attended  your  meeting.  I 
owe  such  debts  to  the  press  that  this  statement  seems  the 
blackest  of  ingratitude.  On  the  contrary,  I  must  plead 
that  doctors  are  privileged.  My  controversy  with  this 
class  of  reporters  is  their  generosity,  which  puts  into 
one's  mouth  statements  that  on  final  analysis  may  be  cold 
facts,  but  which,  remembering  that  one  is  lecturing  on 
work  among  people  whom  one  loves  and  respects,  it 
would  never  occur  to  me  to  slur  at  a  public  meeting.  No 
one  who  tries  to  alter  conditions  which  exist  can  ex- 
pect to  escape  making  enemies.  I  have  seen  reports  of 
what  I  have  said  at  advertised  meetings,  that  were  sub- 
sequently cancelled.  I  have  followed  up  rumours,  and 
editors  have  expressed  sorrow  that  they  accepted  them 
from  men  who  had  been  too  busy  to  be  present.  But  "qui 
s'excuse,  s'accuse";  and  my  conclusion  is  that  the  lec- 
turer is  practically  defenceless. 

Since  our  marriage  my  wife  has  generously  acted  as  my 
secretary,  having  specially  learned  shorthand  and  type- 
writing in  order  to  free  me  from  carrying  such  a  burden, 
and  has  helped  me  enormously  ever  since  on  this  line. 
But  lecture  tours  used  to  make  me  despair  of  keeping 
abreast  of  correspondence.  I  sometimes  was  forced  to 
treat  letters  as  Henry  Drummond  did  —  who  allowed 
them  to  answer  themselves  —  if  I  wished  free  mornings 
in  which  to  visit  the  hospitals,  just  at  the  time  that  all 
their  professional  work  was  in  progress.  These  clinics  are 
invaluable  and  almost  unique  experiences.  They  persuaded 
me  more  than  ever  how  much  depends  in  surgery  as  well 


374  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

as  in  medicine  on  "the  man  behind  the  gun";  and  that 
mere  mileage  is  not  the  real  handicap  on  members  of  our 
profession  whose  fields  of  work  lie  away  from  the  centres 
of  learning.  They  also  imbued  me  with  the  profoundest 
spirit  of  respect  for  the  leaders  of  the  healing  art. 

To  no  one  but  myself  did  it  seem  odd  that  a  plain  Eng- 
lishman should  be  invited  to  perform  the  function  of  best 
man  at  the  wedding  of  the  daughter  of  the  President  of 
the  United  States  of  America  at  the  White  House.  The 
matter  was  never  even  noticed  either  in  the  press  or  in 
conversation.  The  only  citizen  to  whom  I  suggested  the 
anomaly  merely  said,  "Well,  why  not?" 

My  long-time  fellow  worker  and  one  of  my  best  of 
friends,  Francis  B.  Sayre,  was  to  be  married  on  Novem- 
ber 25,  1913,  to  Miss  Jessie  Wilson.  Her  father,  who, 
when  first  I  had  had  the  honour  of  his  acquaintance,  hap- 
pened to  be  the  President  of  Princeton  University,  was 
now  the  President  of  the  United  States.  So  we  had  all  the 
fun  of  a  White  House  wedding.  Not  less  than  fifty  of  our 
fishermen  friends  from  Labrador  and  North  Newfound- 
land were  invited,  and  some  members  of  our  staff  were 
present. 

We  started  the  wedding  procession  upstairs,  and  came 
down  to  the  fanfare  of  uniformed  trumpeters.  Our  awk- 
wardness in  keeping  step,  though  we  had  rehearsed  the 
whole  business  several  times,  only  relieved  the  tension 
that  must  exist  at  so  important  an  event  in  life. 

Trying  to  dodge  the  reporters  added  heaps  of  fun, 
which  I  am  sure  that  they  shared,  for  they  generally  got 
the  better  of  us;  though  the  thrill  of  escape  from  the 
White  House  and  Washington,  so  that  the  honeymoon 
rendezvous  should  not  be  known,  was  practically  a  victory 
for  the  wedding  party.  As  it  would  never  be  safe  to  use 


PROBLEMS  ON  LAND  AND  SEA         375 

the  tactics  again,  I  am  permitted  after  the  lapse  of  many 
years  to  give  them  away.  As  soon  as  dark  fell,  and  while 
the  guests  were  still  revelling,  the  bride  and  groom  were 
hustled  into  a  secret  elevator  in  the  thickness  of  the  wall, 
whisked  up  to  the  robing  chambers,  and  completely  dis- 
guised. Meanwhile  a  suitable  camouflage  of  automobiles 
had  arrived  ostentatiously  at  the  main  entrance,  to  carry 
and  escort  the  illustrious  couple  in  fitting  pomp  to  the 
great  station.  From  the  landing  the  couple  were  dropped 
direct  to  the  basement  to  a  prearranged  oubliette.  The 
password  was  the  sound  of  the  wheels  of  an  ordinary  cab 
at  the  kitchen  entrance.  The  moments  of  suspense  were 
not  long.  At  the  sound  of  the  crush  on  the  gravel  a  silent 
door  was  opened,  two  completely  muffled  figures  crept 
out,  and  the  conspirators  drove  slowly  along  round  a  few 
corners  where  a  swift  automobile  lay  panting  to  add 
liherte  to  egalite  and  fratemite. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

A  MONTH'S  HOLIDAY  IN  ASIA  MINOR 

After  the  fall  spent  in  America  in  raising  the  necessary 
funds,  it  was  the  now  famous  Carmania  which  carried 
us  to  England.  In  spite  of  a  few  days'  rest  at  my  old  home, 
and  the  stimulus  of  a  Grenfell  clan  gathering  in  London, 
my  wife  and  I  were  both  in  need  of  something  which  could 
direct  our  minds  from  our  problems,  and  Boxing  Day 
found  us  bound  for  Paris,  Turin,  Milan,  and  Rome. 

Just  before  Christmas  I  had  had  a  meeting  at  the  fa- 
mous oflSce  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  in  London,  and 
attended  another  of  their  interesting  luncheons  where 
their  directors  meet.  My  old  friend  Lord  Strathcona  pre- 
sided. I  could  not  help  noting  that  after  all  the  lapse  of 
years  since  we  first  met  at  Hudson  Bay  House  in  Mon- 
treal, he  still  retained  his  abstemious  habits.  He  was 
ninety -three,  and  still  at  his  post  as  High  Commissioner 
for  a  great  people,  as  well  as  leading  councillor  of  a  dozen 
companies.  His  memory  of  Labrador  and  his  days  there, 
and  his  love  for  it,  had  not  abated  one  whit.  Hearing  that 
the  hospital  steamer  Strathcona  needed  a  new  boiler  and 
considerable  repairs,  he  ordered  me  to  have  the  work  un- 
dertaken at  once  and  the  bill  sent  to  him.  He,  moreover, 
insisted  that  we  should  spend  some  days  with  him  at  his 
beautiful  country  house  near  London,  an  invitation  which 
we  accepted  for  our  return,  but  which  we  were  never  fated 
to  realize,  for  before  the  appointed  date  that  able  man 
had  crossed  the  last  bar. 

It  is  said  to  be  better  to  be  lucky  than  rich.  We  had  ex- 
pected in  Rome  to  do  only  what  the  Romans  of  our  pock- 
et-book do.  But  we  fell  in  with  some  old  acquaintances 


A  MONTH'S  HOLIDAY  IN  ASIA  MINOR    377 

whose  pleasure  it  is  to  give  pleasure,  and  New  Year's 
night  was  made  memorable  by  a  concert  given  by  the 
choir  of  the  Sistine  Chapel,  to  which  we  were  taken  by 
the  editor  of  the  "Churchman"  and  later  of  the  "Con- 
structive Quarterly,"  an  old  friend  of  ours,  Dr.  Silas 
McBee.  A  glimpse  into  the  British  Embassy  gave  us  an 
insight  into  the  problem  of  Roman  modern  politics  and 
the  factions  of  the  Black  and  White. 

Rome  is  always  delightful.  One  is  glad  to  forget  the 
future  and  live  for  the  time  in  the  past.  Sitting  in  the 
Coliseum  in  the  moonlight  I  could  see  the  gladiators 
fighting  to  amuse  the  civilized  man  of  that  period,  and 
gentle  women  and  innocent  men  dying  horrible  deaths 
for  truths  that  have  made  us  what  we  are,  but  which  we 
now  sometimes  regard  so  lightly. 

I  confess  that  religious  buildings,  religious  pictures, 
religious  conventions  of  all  kinds  very  soon  pall  on  my 
particular  temperament.  It  is  possibly  a  defect  in  my 
development,  like  my  inability  to  appreciate  classical 
music.  On  the  other  hand,  like  Mark  Twain,  I  enjoy  an 
ancient  mummy  just  because  he  is  ancient;  and  were  it 
not  for  the  irritation  of  seeing  so  much  religious  display 
associated  with  such  miserable  social  conditions  in  so 
beautiful  a  country,  I  should  have  more  sympathy  with 
those  who  would  "see  Rome  and  die."  The  sanitation  of 
the  one-time  Mistress  of  the  world  suggests  that  it  could 
not  be  difficult  to  accomplish  that  feat  in  the  hot  weather. 

Brindisi  is  a  household  word  in  almost  every  English 
home,  especially  one  like  ours  with  literally  dozens  of 
Anglo-Indian  relatives.  I  was  therefore  glad  to  pass  via 
Brindisi  on  the  road  to  Athens.  Patras  also  had  its  interest 
to  me  as  a  distributing  centre  for  our  Labrador  fish.  We 
actually  saw  three  forlorn-looking  schooners,  with  ear- 
goes  from  Newfoundland,  lying  in  the  harbour. 


S78  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

One  poignant  impression  left  on  my  mind  by  Greece, 
as  well  as  Rome,  was  its  diminutive  size.  I  almost  re- 
sented the  fact  that  a  place  civilized  thousands  of  years 
ago,  and  which  had  loomed  up  on  my  imagination  as 
the  land  of  Socrates,  of  Plato,  of  Homer,  of  Achilles,  of 
Spartan  warriors,  and  immortal  poets,  all  seemed  so  small. 
The  sense  of  imposition  on  my  youth  worried  me. 

In  Athens  one  saw  so  many  interesting  relics  within 
a  few  hundred  yards  that  it  left  one  with  the  feeling  of 
having  eaten  a  meal  too  fast.  The  scene  of  the  battle  of 
Salamis  fascinated  me.  When  we  sat  in  Xerxes'  seat  and 
conjured  up  the  whole  picture  again,  and  saw  the  meaning 
to  the  world  of  the  great  deed  for  which  men  so  gladly 
gave  their  lives  to  defeat  a  tyrant  seeking  for  world 
power,  it  made  me  love  those  old  Greeks,  not  merely  ad- 
mire their  art. 

On  Mars  Hill  we  stood  on  the  spot  where,  to  me,  per- 
haps the  greatest  man  in  history,  save  one,  pleaded  with 
men  to  accept  love  as  the  only  durable  source  of  great- 
ness and  power.  But  every  monument,  every  bas-relief, 
every  tombstone  showed  that  the  fighting  man  was  their 
ideal. 

The  idea  of  sailing  from  the  Piraeus  reconciled  us  to  the 
very  mediocre  vessel  which  carried  us  to  Smyrna.  Our 
visit  to  Asia  Minor  we  had  inadvertently  timed  to  the 
opening  of  the  International  College  at  Paradise  near 
Smyrna.  This  college  is  the  gift  of  Mrs.  John  Kennedy  of 
New  York.  Mr.  Ralph  Harlow,  our  host  and  a  professor 
at  the  college,  with  Mr.  Cass  Reid  and  other  friends,  made 
it  possible  for  us  to  enjoy  intelligently  our  brief  visit.  It 
was  just  a  dream  of  pleasure.  Time  forbids  my  describing 
the  marvellous  work  of  that  and  other  colleges.  Men 
of  ambition,  utterly  irrespective  of  race,  colour,  creed,  or 
sect,  sit  side  by  side  as  the  alumni.  The  humanity,  not 


A  MONTH'S  HOLIDAY  IN  ASIA  MINOR    379 

the  other-worldliness,  of  the  leaders  has  made  even  the 
Turks,  steeped  in  the  blood  of  their  innocent  Christian 
subjects,  recognize  the  untold  value  of  these  Christian 
universities,  and  kept  them,  their  professors,  and  build- 
ings, safe  during  the  war. 

Dr.  Bliss,  of  Beyrout,  once  told  us  a  humorous  story 
about  himself.  He  had  just  been  addressing  a  large  audi- 
ence in  New  York,  when  immediately  after  his  speech 
the  chairman  rose  and  announced,  "We  will  now  sing 
the  one  hundred  and  fiftieth  hymn,  'From  the  best  bliss 
that  earth  imparts,  we  turn  unfilled  to  Thee  again.' " 

The  preservation  of  Ephesus  was  a  surprise  to  us, 
though  of  late  the  Turks  have  been  carrying  off  its  pre- 
cious historic  marble  to  biu-n  for  lime  for  their  fields.  One 
large  marble  font  in  an  old  Byzantine  baptistry  was  bro- 
ken up  for  that  purpose  while  we  were  there.  We  stood 
on  the  very  rostrum  in  the  theatre  where  St.  Paul  and  the 
coppersmith  had  trouble  —  while  at  the  time  of  our  visit, 
the  only  living  inhabitant  of  that  once  great  city  was  a 
hungry  ass  which  we  saw  harboured  in  a  dressing-room 
beneath  the  platform. 

The  anachronism  of  buzzing  along  a  Roman  road,  which 
had  not  been  repaired  since  the  days  of  the  Caesars,  on  our 
way  to  Pergamos,  in  the  only  Ford  car  in  the  country,  was 
punctuated  by  having  to  get  out  and  shove  whenever  we 
came  to  a  cross-drain.  These  always  went  over  instead 
of  under  the  road  —  only  on  an  exaggerated  Baltimorian 
plan.  One  night  at  Soma,  which  is  the  end  of  the  branch 
railroad  in  the  direction  of  Pergamos,  we  were  in  the  best 
hotel,  which,  however,  was  only  half  of  it  for  humans.  A 
detachment  of  Turkish  soldiers  were  billeted  below  in  the 
quarters  for  the  other  animals.  Snow  was  on  the  ground, 
and  it  was  bitterly  cold.  The  poor  soldiers  slept  literally 
on  the  stone  floor.  We  were  cold,  and  we  felt  so  sorry  for 


S80  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

them,  that  after  we  had  enjoyed  a  hot  breakfast,  in  a  fit 
of  generosity  we  sent  them  a  couple  of  baskets  of  Turk- 
ish specialties.  Later  in  the  day  we  noticed  that  wherever 
we  went  a  Turkish  soldier  with  a  rifle  followed  us.  So  we 
turned  off  into  a  side  street  and  walked  out  into  the  coun- 
try. Sure  enough  the  soldier  came  along  behind.  As  guide 
to  speak  the  many  languages  for  us,  we  had  a  Greek 
graduate  of  International  College,  a  very  delightful  young 
fellow,  very  proud  of  a  newly  acquired  American  citizen- 
ship. At  last  we  stopped  and  bribed  that  soldier  to  tell 
us  what  the  trouble  was.  "Our  officer  thought  that  you 
must  be  spies  because  you  sent  gifts  to  Turkish  soldiers." 

At  Pergamos,  a  Greek  Christian  —  very  well  off  — 
invited  us  to  be  his  guests  on  Greek  Christmas  Eve.  It 
was  the  occasion  of  a  large  family  gathering.  There  were 
fine  young  men  and  handsome,  dark-eyed  girls,  and  all 
the  accessories  of  a  delightful  Christian  home.  When  the 
outer  gates  had  been  locked,  and  the  inner  doors  bolted 
and  bhnds  drawn  down,  and  all  possible  loopholes  ex- 
amined for  spies,  the  usual  festivities  were  observed. 
These  families  of  the  conquered  race  have  lived  in  bond- 
age some  four  hundred  years,  but  their  patriotism  has 
no  more  dimmed  than  that  of  ancient  Israel  under  her 
oppressors.  Before  we  left  they  danced  for  us  the  famous 
Souliet  Dance  —  memorial  to  the  brave  Greek  girls  who, 
driven  to  their  last  stand  on  a  rocky  hilltop,  jumped  one 
by  one  over  the  precipice  as  the  dance  came  round  to 
each  one,  rather  than  submit  to  shame  and  slavery.  From 
our  friends  at  Smyrna  we  learned  subsequently  that  when, 
a  few  months  later,  and  just  before  the  war,  the  German 
general  visited  the  country,  making  overtures  to  the 
Turks,  the  blow  fell  on  this  family  like  many  others,  and 
they  suffered  the  agony  of  deportation. 

At  Constantinople  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Morgenthau, 


A  MONTH'S  HOLIDAY  IN  ASU  MINOR    381 

the  American  Ambassador,  and  the  optimism  bred  by 
Robert  College  and  the  Girls'  School,  left  delightful 
memories  of  even  the  few  days  in  winter  that  we  spent 
there.  The  museum  alone  is  worth  the  long  journey  to 
it,  and  when  a  teacher  from  the  splendid  Girls'  School, 
herself  a  specialist  on  the  Hittites,  was  good  enough  to 
show  it  to  us,  it  was  like  a  leap  back  into  the  long  history 
of  man.  It  seemed  but  a  step  to  the  Neanderthal  skull 
and  our  Troglodyte  forbears. 

Owing  to  shortage  of  time  we  returned  to  England 
through  Bulgaria,  passing  through  Serbia,  and  stopping 
for  a  day  at  Budapest  and  two  at  Vienna.  We  would  have 
been  glad  to  linger  longer,  for  every  hour  was  delightful. 

The  month's  holiday  did  me  lots  of  good  and  sent  me 
back  to  England  a  new  man  to  begin  lecturing  again  in 
the  interests  of  the  distant  Labrador;  and  with  the  feeling 
that,  after  all,  our  cbast  was  a  very  good  place  for  one's 
life-work. 

We  helped  to  lessen  the  tedium  of  the  lectures  by  do- 
ing most  of  the  travelling  in  an  automobile  of  my  broth- 
er's, in  which  we  lived,  moved,  and  had  our  meals  by 
the  roadside.  The  lectures  took  us  everywhere  from  the 
drawing-room  of  a  border  castle  on  the  line  of  the  old 
Roman  Wall  —  which  Puck  of  Pook's  Hill  had  made  as 
fascinating  for  us  as  he  did  for  the  children  —  to  the 
Embassy  in  Paris. 

Once  more  the  Mauretania  carried  us  to  America. 
April  was  spent  partly  in  lecturing  and  partly  in  attend- 
ing surgical  clinics  —  a  very  valuable  experience  being 
a  week's  work  with  Dr.  W.  R.  MacAusland,  of  Boston,  at 
his  orthopedic  clinics  in  and  around  that  city.  He  and 
his  brother  "Andy"  had  passed  a  summer  with  us  in 
Labrador.  May  found  us  in  Canada  visiting  our  help- 
ers, and  stimulating  various  branches  by  lectures.  While 


382  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

loading  the  George  B.  Cluett  in  early  June  in  St.  John's, 
Newfoundland,  we  organized  an  education  committee 
to  work  with  the  Institute  Committee,  to  give  regular 
educational  lectures  throughout  the  winter.  Dr.  Lloyd, 
our  present  Prime  Minister,  and  Sir  Patrick  McGrath, 
always  a  stanch  friend  of  the  Mission,  helped  materially 
in  this  new  activity. 

The  Institute  at  the  time  was  housing  some  of  the 
crew  of  the  Greenland,  who  had  come  through  the  terri- 
ble experiences  at  the  seal  fishery  in  the  spring  of  1914. 
Caught  on  the  ice  in  a  fearful  bHzzard,  almost  all  had  per- 
ished miserably.  Some  few  had  survived  to  lose  limbs 
and  functions  from  frostbums.  The  occasion  gave  the  In- 
stitute one  of  the  many  opportunities  for  a  service  rather 
more  dramatic  than  the  routine,  which  did  much  to  win 
it  popularity. 

Midsummer's  Day  and  the  two  following  days  we  were 
stuck  in  a  heavy  ice-jam  one  hundred  miles  south  of  St. 
Anthony.  My  wife  and  boys  had  arrived  in  St.  Anthony 
before  me,  and  to  find  them  in  our  own  house,  and  the 
hospital  full  of  opportunity  for  the  line  of  help  which  I 
especially  enjoy,  afforded  all  that  heart  could  wish. 

Early  in  July  the  Duke  of  Connaught,  the  Governor- 
General  of  Canada,  paid  us  a  long-promised  visit.  It  was 
highly  appreciated  by  all  our  people,  who  would  possibly 
have  paid  him  more  undivided  attention  had  he  not  been 
kind  enough  to  send  his  band  ashore  —  the  first  St.  An- 
thony had  ever  heard.  The  resplendent  uniforms  of  the 
members  totally  eclipsed  that  of  the  Duke,  who  was  in 
"mufti";  but  he  readily  understood  that  the  division 
of  attention  was  really  not  attributable  to  us.  He  proved 
to  be  a  thorough  good  sport  and  a  most  democratic 
prince. 

The  war  having  broken  out  in  August,  we  had  only  one 


A  MONTH'S  HOLIDAY  IN  ASIA  MINOR    383 

idea  —  economy  on  every  side,  that  we  might  all  be  able 
to  do  what  we  could.  We  had  not  then  begun  to  realize 
the  seriousness  of  it  suflBciently  to  dream  that  we  should 
be  welcome  ourselves.  We  closed  up  all  activities  not  en- 
tirely necessary,  and  even  the  hospital  ship  went  into 
winter  quarters  so  early  that  my  fall  trip  was  made  from 
harbour  to  harbour  in  the  people's  own  boats  or  by  mail 
steamer  or  schooner,  as  opportunity  offered. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE  WAR 

In  the  fall  of  1915, 1  was  urged  by  the  Harvard  Surgical 
Unit  to  make  one  of  their  number  for  their  proposed  term 
of  service  that  winter  at  a  base  hospital  in  France.  Having 
discussed  the  matter  with  my  directors,  we  decided  that 
it  was  justifiable  to  postpone  the  lecture  tour  which  had 
been  arranged  for  me,  in  view  of  this  new  need. 

We  sailed  for  England  on  the  Dutch  liner  New  Amster- 
dam and  landed  at  Falmouth,  passing  through  a  cordon 
of  mine-sweepers  and  small  patrols  as  we  neared  the  Eng- 
lish shores.  My  wife's  o£Per  to  work  in  France  not  being 
accepted,  since  I  held  the  rank  of  Major,  we  ran  down 
to  my  old  home,  where  she  decided  to  spend  most  of  her 
time.  My  uniform  and  kit  were  ready  in  a  few  days;  and 
in  spite  of  the  multitudinous  calls  on  the  War  Office  offi- 
cials, I  can  say  in  defence  of  red  tape  that  my  papers  were 
made  out  very  quickly.  I  was  thus  able  to  leave  promptly 
for  Boulogne,  near  which  I  joined  the  other  members  of 
my  Unit,  who  had  preceded  me  by  a  fortnight. 

It  was  Christmas  and  the  snow  was  on  the  ground 
when  I  arrived  in  France.  There  was  much  talk  of  trench 
feet  and  the  cold.  Our  life  in  the  North  had  afforded  ex- 
periences more  like  those  at  the  front  than  most  people's. 
We  are  forced  to  try  and  obtain  warmth  and  mobility 
combined  with  economy,  especially  in  food  and  clothing. 
At  the  request  of  the  editor,  I  therefore  sent  to  the  "Brit- 
ish Medical  Journal"  a  summary  of  deductions  from  our 
Northern  experiences.  Clothes  only  keep  heat  in  and 
damp  out.  Thickness,  not  even  fur,  will  warm  a  statue, 
and  our  ideal  has  been  to  obtain  light,  wind-  and  water- 


THE  WAR  385 

proof  material,  and  a  pattern  that  prevents  leakage  of  the 
body's  heat  from  the  neck,  wrists,  waist,  knees,  and  ankles. 
Our  skin  boots,  by  being  soft,  water-tight,  and  roomy,  re- 
move the  causes  of  trench  feet.  Later  when  I  returned  to 
England  I  was  invited  to  the  War  OflSce  to  talk  over  the 
matter.  The  defects,  either  in  wet  and  cold  or  in  hot  wea- 
ther, of  woolen  khaki  cloth  are  obvious,  and  when  sub- 
sequently I  visited  the  naval  authorities  in  Washington 
about  the  same  subject,  I  was  dehghted  to  be  assured 
that  on  all  small  naval  craft  our  patterns  were  being 
exclusively  used.  Who  introduced  them  did  not  matter. 

I  had  also  advocated  a  removable  insert  of  sheet  steel 
in  a  pocket  on  the  breast  of  the  tunic,  this  plate  to  be 
kept  in  the  trenches  and  inserted  on  advancing;  and  a 
lobster-tail  steel  knee-piece  in  the  knickers.  Of  this  lat- 
ter Sir  Robert  Jones,  the  British  orthopedic  chief,  appre- 
ciated the  value,  knowing  how  many  splendid  men  are 
put  hors  de  combat  by  tiny  pieces  of  shell  splinters  infect- 
ing that  joint.  But  the  "Journal"  censored  all  these  ref- 
erences to  armour.  A  wounded  Frenchman  at  Berck  pre- 
sented me  with  a  helmet  heavily  dented  by  shrapnel,  and 
told  me  that  he  owed  his  life  to  it.  Later  at  General  Head- 
quarters, General  Sir  Arthur  Sloggett  showed  me  a  col- 
lection of  a  dozen  experimental  helmets,  each  of  which 
stood  for  a  saved  life. 

One  of  the  soldiers  who  came  under  my  care  had  a  bul- 
let wound  through  the  palm  of  his  hand.  I  happened  to 
ask  him  where  his  hand  had  been  when  hit.  He  said,  "On 
my  hip.  We  were  mending  a  break  in  our  barbed  wire 
at  night,  and  a  fixed  rifle  got  me,  exactly  where  it  got  my 
chum  just  afterwards,  but  it  went  through  him." 

"Where  did  your  bullet  go?" 

"I  don't  know,"  he  answered. 

An  examination  of  his  trousers  showed  the  bullet  in  his 


386  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

pocket.  It  was  embedded  in  three  pennies  and  two  francs 
which  he  happened  to  be  carrying  there,  and  which  his 
wounded  hand  had  prevented  his  feehng  for  afterwards. 

Pathos  and  humour,  Hke  genius  and  madness,  are  close 
akin.  One  of  the  boys  told  me  of  a  chum  who  was  very 
"churchy,"  and  always  carried  an  Episcopal  Prayer  Book 
in  his  pocket  —  for  which  he  was  not  a  little  chaffed.  For 
a  joke  one  day  he  was  presented  with  a  second  that  a  mess- 
mate had  received,  but  for  which  he  had  no  use.  His  scru- 
ples about  "wasting  it"  made  him  put  it  in  his  pocket  with 
the  other.  Soon  after  this,  in  an  advance,  he  was  shot  in 
the  chest.  The  bullet  passed  right  through  the  first  Prayer 
Book  and  lodged  in  the  second,  where  it  was  found  on  his 
arrival  at  hospital  for  another  slight  wound.  He  at  least 
will  long  continue  to  swear  by  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer. 

One  day,  walking  with  other  officers  in  the  country,  we 
stumbled  across  a  tiny  isolated  farm.  As  usual  the  voice 
of  the  inevitable  Tommy  could  be  heard  from  within. 
They  were  tending  cavalry  horses,  which  filled  every 
available  nook  and  corner  behind  the  lines  at  a  period 
when  cavalry  was  considered  useless  in  action.  Having 
learned  that  one  of  these  men  had  been  body  servant  to  a 
cousin  of  mine,  who  was  a  V.C.  at  the  time  that  he  was 
killed,  I  asked  him  for  the  details  of  his  death.  The  Ger- 
mans had  broken  through  on  the  left  of  his  command, 
and  it  was  instantly  imperative  to  hold  the  morale  while 
help  from  the  right  was  summoned.  Jumping  on  the  para- 
pet, my  cousin  had  stood  there  encouraging  the  line  amid 
volleys  of  bullets.  At  the  same  time  he  ordered  his  serv- 
ant to  carry  word  to  the  right  at  once.  Suddenly  a  bullet 
passed  through  his  body  and  he  fell  into  the  trench.  Pro- 
testing that  he  was  all  right,  he  declared  that  he  could  hold 
out  till  the  man  should  come  back.  On  his  return  he  found 


THE  WAR  S87 

that  my  cousin  was  dead.  But  help  came,  the  Hue  held, 
and  the  German  attack  was  a  costly  failure.  His  servant 
had  collected  and  turned  in  all  the  little  personal  posses- 
sions of  any  value  which  he  had  found  on  the  body. 

"I  think  that  you  should  have  got  a  Military  Cross,"  I 
said. 

"I  did  get  an  M.C.,"  he  answered. 

*'I  congratulate  you,"  I  replied. 

"It  was  a  confinement  to  barracks.  A  bullet  had  smashed 
to  pieces  a  little  wrist  watch  which  the  captain  always 
carried.  It  was  quite  valueless,  and  I  had  kept  the  rem- 
nants as  a  memento  of  a  man  whom  every  one  loved. 
But  a  comrade  got  back  at  me  by  reporting  it  to  head- 
quarters, and  they  had  to  punish  me,  they  said." 

It  is  true,  "strafing"  was  at  a  low  ebb  at  the  time  that 
I  arrived  in  France;  but  even  I  was  not  a  bit  prepared 
for  the  amount  of  leisure  time  that  our  duties  allowed  us. 
There  were  in  France  hundreds  of  sick  and  wounded  for 
every  one  in  the  lonely  North;  but  in  Labrador  you  are 
always  on  the  go,  being  often  the  only  available  doctor. 
Our  Unit  had  at  the  time  only  some  five  hundred  beds 
and  a  very  strong  staff,  both  of  doctors  and  nurses.  In 
spite  of  lending  one  of  our  colonels  and  several  of  our 
staff  to  other  hospitals,  we  still  had  not  enough  beds  to 
keep  us  fully  occupied.  It  gave  me  ample  time  to  help 
out  occasionally  in  Y.M.C.A.  activities,  and  to  do  some 
visiting  among  the  poor  French  families  and  refugees  in 
Boulogne,  close  to  which  city  our  hospital  was  located. 
I  could  also  visit  other  Units,  and  give  lantern  shows, 
which  had,  I  thought,  special  value  when  psychic  treat- 
ment was  badly  needed.  Shell-shock  was  but  very  imper- 
fectly understood  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  The  foot- 
ball matches  and  athletic  sports  did  not  need  the  asset 
of  \>euig  an  antidote  to  shell-shock  to  attract  my  patron- 


388  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

age.  Never  in  my  life  had  I  realized  quite  so  keenly  what 
a  saving  trait  the  sporting  instinct  is  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
—  a  strain  of  it  in  the  Teuton  might  have  even  averted 
this  war. 

My  stay  in  France  enabled  me  to  enjoy  that  which  life 
on  the  Labrador  largely  denies  one  —  the  contact  with 
many  educated  minds.  It  was  the  custom,  if  an  officer 
needed  a  lift  along  the  road,  to  hail  any  passing  motor. 
While  walking  one  day,  I  took  advantage  of  this  privilege, 
and  found  myseK  driving  with  Sir  Bertrand  Dawson,  the 
King's  physician,  with  whom  I  thus  renewed  a  most  val- 
ued acquaintanceship.  On  another  occasion  our  host  or 
guest  might  be  Sir  Almroth  Wright,  the  famous  pathol- 
ogist, or  Sir  Robert  Jones  would  pay  us  a  visit,  or  Sir  Fred- 
erick Treves.  In  fact,  we  had  chances  to  meet  many  of 
the  great  leaders  of  our  profession.  Sir  Arthur  Lawley,  the 
head  of  our  Red  Cross  in  France,  gave  me  some  delightful 
evenings.  Unquestionably  there  is  an  intense  pleasure 
in  hearing  and  seeing  personally  the  men  who  are  doing 
things. 

Food  grew  perceptibly  scarcer  in  Boulogne  even  during 
my  stay.  The  petits  gateaux  got  smaller,  the  hours  during 
which  officers  might  enter  restaurants  for  afternoon  tea 
became  painfully  shorter.  But  they  were  not  a  whit  less 
enjoyable,  reminding  one  as  they  did  of  the  dear  old  days, 
long  before  the  war  was  thought  of,  and  before  the  war 
of  life  had  taken  me  to  Labrador.  If  one  had  hoped  that 
a  life  in  the  wilds  had  succeeded  in  eradicating  natural 
desires,  those  relapses  in  the  midst  of  war-time  completely 
destroyed  any  such  delusion.  Every  day  was  full  of  ex- 
citement. Bombs  fell  on  the  city  only  twice  while  I  was 
there,  and,  moreover,  we  were  bitterly  disappointed  that 
we  did  not  know  it  till  we  read  the  news  in  the  morn- 
ing paper.  But  every  day  flying  machines  of  all  sorts 


THE  WAR  389 

sailed  overhead.  My  interest  never  failed  to  respond  to 
the  buzzing  of  some  hurrying  airship,  or  the  sight  of  a 
seaplane  dropping  out  of  heaven  into  the  water  and  swim- 
ming calmly  ashore,  waddling  up  the  beach  into  its  pen 
exactly  like  a  great  duck. 

One  day  it  was  the  excitement  of  watching  trawlers 
from  the  cliffs  firing-up  mines;  another,  hunting  along 
the  beach  among  the  silent  evidences  of  some  tragedy 
at  sea,  or  riding  convalescent  horses  that  needed  exercise, 
flying  along  the  sands  to  see  some  special  sight,  such  as 
the  carcass  of  a  leviathan  wrecked  by  butting  into  mine- 
fields. 

Close  to  us  was  a  large  Canadian  Unit.  They  were 
changing  their  location,  and  for  three  months  had  been 
in  the  sorry  company  of  those  who  have  no  work  to  do. 
The  matron,  however,  told  me  that  she  found  plenty  to 
occupy  her  time  —  in  such  a  beehive  of  ofl&cers,  with 
seventy-five  nurses  to  look  after. 

When  at  the  close  of  the  period  for  which  I  had  volun- 
teered I  had  to  decide  whether  to  sign  on  again,  my  whole 
inclination  was  to  stay  just  another  term;  but  as  my  com- 
mandant. Colonel  David  Cheever,  informed  me  that  he 
and  a  number  of  the  busier  men  felt  that  duty  called 
them  home,  and  that  there  were  plenty  of  volunteers  to 
take  our  places,  my  judgment  convinced  me  that  I  was 
more  needed  in  Labrador. 

I  shall  not  say  much  of  the  Y.M.C.A.  They  need  no 
encomium  of  mine,  but  I  am  prepared  to  stand  by  them 
to  the  last  ditch.  They  were  doing,  not  talking,  and  were 
wise  enough  to  use  even  those  agents  whom  they  knew 
to  be  imperfect,  as  God  Himself  does  when  He  uses  us. 
The  folly  of  judging  for  all  cases  by  one  standard  is  com- 
mon and  human,  but  it  is  not  God's  way.  This  convic- 
tion was  brought  home  to  me  in  a  very  odd  manner.  I 


S90  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

had  gone  to  lecture  at  an  English  Y.M.C.A.  hut  at  the 
invitation  of  the  efficient  director,  who  knew  me  only 
for  a  "medical  missionary."  On  my  arrival  he  most  hos- 
pitably took  me  to  the  cupboard  which  he  called  "his 
rooms."  It  was  a  raw,  cold  night,  and  among  other  efforts 
to  show  his  gratitude  for  my  help,  to  my  amazement  he 
offered  me  "a  drop  of  Scotch."  Astonishment  so  outran 
good-breeding  that  I  unwittingly  let  him  perceive  it.  "I 
am  not  a  regular  '  Y'  man.  Major,"  he  explained.  "I'm 
an  Australian,  and  was  living  on  my  little  pile  when  the 
war  began.  They  turned  me  down  each  place  I  volun- 
teered on  account  of  my  age.  But  I  was  crazy  to  do  my 
bit,  and  I  offered  to  work  with  the  Y.M.C.A.  as  a  stop- 
gap. The  War  Office  has  commandeered  so  many  of  their 
men  that  they  had  to  take  me  to  'carry  on.'  I'm  afraid 
I  'm  a  poor  apology,  but  I  'm  doing  my  best." 

The  freedom  from  convention  lent  another  peculiar 
charm  to  the  life  in  France.  The  mess  sergeant  of  a  head- 
quarters where  I  was  dining  one  night,  close  behind  the 
lines,  presented  the  colonel  with  a  beautifully  illustrated 
monograph  on  a  certain  unmentionable  and  unwelcome 
member  of  war  camps  and  trench  life.  The  beautiful  work 
and  the  evidences  of  scientific  training  led  me  to  ask  who 
the  mess  sergeant  might  have  been  in  civil  life.  "Professor 
of  Biology  at  the  University  of ,"  was  the  reply. 

The  most  inspiring  fact  about  the  Channel  ports  at 
that  time  was  the  regularity  with  which  steamers  ar- 
rived, crowded  with  soldiers,  and  returned  with  wounded. 
We  could  see  England  on  clear  days  from  our  quarters, 
and  could  follow  the  boats  almost  across.  The  number 
of  trawlers  at  work  all  the  year  round,  even  in  heavy 
gales  that  almost  blew  us  off  the  cliffs,  was  enough  to  tell 
how  vigilant  a  watch  was  being  kept  all  the  while.  One 
morning  only  we  woke  to  find  a  large  stray  steamer,  that 


THE  WAR  391 

had  entered  the  roads  overnight,  sunk  across  the  harbour 
mouth,  her  decks  awash  at  low  water  —  torpedoed,  we 
supposed.  Another  day  a  small  patrol,  literally  cut  in 
half  by  a  mine,  was  towed  in.  But  though  both  in  the  air 
and  under  the  sea  all  the  ingenuity  of  the  enemy  from 
as  near  by  as  Ostend  was  unceasingly  directed  against 
that  living  stream,  not  one  single  disaster  happened 
the  whole  winter  that  I  was  out.  Our  mine-fields  were 
constantly  being  changed.  The  different  courses  the  traf- 
fic took  from  day  to  day  suggested  that.  But  who  did  it, 
and  when,  no  one  ever  knew.  The  noise  of  occasional 
bomb-firing,  once  a  mine  rolling  up  on  the  shore,  exploding 
and  throwing  some  incredibly  big  fragments  onto  the 
golf  links,  the  incessant  tramp  of  endless  soldiers  in  the 
street,  the  ever-present  but  silent  motors  hurrying  to 
and  fro,  and  the  nightly  arrival  of  convoys  of  wounded, 
were  all  that  reminded  us  that  any  war  was  in  prog- 
ress. Had  it  been  permitted,  the  beach  would  have  been 
crowded  as  usual  with  invahds,  nursemaids,  and  peram- 
bulators. 

The  second  marvel  was  that  in  spite  of  the  enormous 
numbers  of  people  coming  and  going,  no  secrets  leaked 
out.  We  gave  up  looking  for  news  almost  as  completely 
as  in  winter  in  Labrador.  We  seemed  to  be  shut  off  en- 
tirely in  an  eddy  of  the  stream,  as  we  are  in  our  Northern 
wastes. 

The  spirit  of  humour  in  the  wounded  Briton  was  as  in- 
valuable as  the  love  of  sport  when  he  is  well.  On  one  occa- 
sion a  small  party  were  going  to  relieve  a  section  of  the  fine. 
The  Boches  had  the  range  of  a  piece  of  the  road  over 
which  they  had  to  pass,  and  the  men  made  dashes  singly 
or  in  small  numbers  across  it.  A  lad,  a  well-known  ath- 
lete, was  caught  by  a  shell  and  blown  over  a  hedge  into 
a  field.  When  they  reached  him,  his  leg  was  gone  and  one 


S92  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

arm  badly  smashed.  He  was  sitting  up  smoking  a  cigar- 
ette, and  all  he  said  was,  "Well,  I  fancy  that's  the  end 
of  my  football  days."  One  very  undeveloped  man,  who 
had  somehow  leaked  into  Kitchener's  Army,  told  me, 
"Well,  you  see.  Major,  I  was  a  bit  too  weak  for  a  labour- 
ing man,  so  I  joined  the  army.  I  thought  it  might  do 
my  'ealth  good!"  One  of  the  English  papers  reported 
that  when  a  small  Gospel  was  sent  by  post  to  a  prisoner 
in  Germany  the  Teuton  official  stamped  every  page, 
"Passed  by  the  Censor." 

The  practice  of  listening  to  the  yarns  of  the  wounded 
was  much  discouraged,  chiefly  for  one's  own  sake,  for  their 
knowledge  was  less  accurate  than  our  own,  while  shell- 
shock  led  them  to  imagine  more.  The  censor  had  always 
good  yarns  to  tell.  The  men  showed  generally  much  good- 
humour  and  a  universal  hght-heartedness.  Our  wounded 
hardly  ever  "groused."  They  hid  their  troubles  and 
cheered  their  families,  seldom  or  never  by  pious  senti- 
ments. One  man  writing  from  a  regimental  camp  close 
to  Boulogne,  after  a  painfully  uneventful  Channel  cross- 
ing, announced,  "Here  we  are  in  the  enemies'  country 
right  under  the  muzzles  of  the  guns.  We  got  over  quite 
safely,  though  three  submarines  chased  us  and  shelled 
us  all  the  way.  Food  here  is  very  short.  I  have  n't  looked 
at  a  bun  for  weeks.  A  bit  more  of  that  cake  of  yours  would 
do  nicely,  not  to  talk  o'  smokes.  Your  loving  husband." 
Another  letter  was  quoted  in  the  "Daily  Mail."  It  ran: 
"Dear  Mother  —  This  comes  hoping  that  it  may  find 
you  as  it  leaves  me  at  present.  I  have  a  broken  leg,  and  a 
bullet  in  my  left  lung.  Your  affectionate  son." 

Yet  the  men  were  far  from  fatalists,  and  the  psychic 
stimulus  of  being  able  to  tell  your  patient  that  he  was 
ordered  to  "Blighty"  was  demonstrable  on  his  history 
chart.  One  poor  fellow  whose  right  arm  was  infected  with 


THE  WAR  393 

gas  bacillus  was  so  anxious  to  save  it  that  we  left  it  on  too 
long  and  general  blood  poisoning  set  in.  He  was  on  the 
dying  list.  The  Government  under  these  circumstances 
would  pay  the  expenses  of  a  wife  or  mother  to  come  over 
and  say  the  last  good-bye.  After  the  message  went,  it 
seemed  that  our  friend  could  not  last  till  their  arrival,  and 
the  colonel  decided  as  a  last  chance  to  try  intra-venous 
injections  of  Eusol,  the  powerful  antiseptic  in  use  at  that 
time  in  all  the  hospitals.  On  entering  the  ward  the  next 
morning  the  nurse  told  me  with  a  smiling  face,  "B.  is  ever 
so  much  better.  I  think  that  he  will  pull  through  all  right." 
"Then  the  Eusol  injection  has  done  good,  I  suppose?'* 
"His  wife  and  mother  came  last  night  and  sat  up  with 
him"  —  and  I  saw  a  twinkle  in  the  corner  of  her  eye. 
Eusol  injections  are  now  considered  inert. 

With  so  many  patients  who  only  remained  so  short  a 
time,  there  was  an  inevitable  tendency  to  relapse  into 
treating  men  as  "  cases,"  not  as  brothers.  To  get  through 
their  exterior  needed  tact  and  experience.  But  if  love  is  a 
force  stronger  than  bayonets  and  guns,  it  certainly  has 
its  place  in  modern  —  and  all  time  —  surgery.  I  have  a 
shrewd  suspicion  that  it  is  better  worth  exhibiting  than 
quite  a  number  of  the  drugs  still  on  the  world's  pharma- 
copoeias. Many  of  the  nurses  kept  visitors'  books,  and  in 
these  their  patients  were  asked  to  write  their  names  or 
anything  they  liked.  The  little  fact  made  them  feel  more 
at  home,  as  if  some  person  really  cared  for  them.  One 
could  not  help  noticing  how  many  of  them  broke  out  into 
verse,  though  most  of  them  were  labouring  men  at  home. 
Although  some  was  not  original,  it  showed  that  they  liked 
poetry.  Some  was  extempore,  as  the  following: 

"Good-bye,  dear  mother,  sister,  brother. 
Drive  away  those  bitter  tears. 
For  England 's  in  no  danger 
While  there  are  bomb  throwers  in  the  Tenth  Royal  Fusiliers." 


394  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

The  following  effusion  I  think  was  doubtless  evolved 
gradually.  It  runs : 

"There's  a  little  dug-out  in  a  trench, 
\    Which  the  rainstorms  continually  drench. 
With  the  sky  overhead,  and  a  stone  for  a  bed. 
And  another  that  acts  for  a  bench. 

"It's  hard  bread  and  cold  bully  we  chew; 
It  is  months  since  we've  tasted  a  stew; 
And  the  Jack  Johnsons  flare  through  the  cold  wintry  air. 
O'er  my  little  wet  home  in  the  trench. 

"  So  hurrah  for  the  mud  and  the  clay. 
Which  leads  to  *der  Tag,'  that's  the  day 
When  we  enter  Berlin,  that  city  of  sin. 
And  make  the  fat  Berliners  pay." 

I  have  never  been  in  any  sense  what  is  generally  under- 
stood by  the  term  "faith  healer,"  but  I  am  certain  that 
you  can  make  a  new  man  out  of  an  old  one,  can  save  a 
man  who  is  losing  ground,  and  turn  the  balance  and  help 
him  to  win  out  through  psychic  agencies  when  all  our 
chemical  stimulants  are  only  doing  harm.  That  seemed 
especially  true  in  those  put  hors  de  combat  by  the  almost 
superhuman  horrors  of  this  war.  It  seemed  to  me  to  pay 
especially  to  get  the  confidence  of  one's  patients.  Thus 
one  man  would  be  drawn  out  by  the  gift  of  a  few  flowers, 
a  little  fruit,  cigarettes,  as  so  many  of  the  kindly  visitors 
discovered.  One  man  with  shrapnel  splinters  in  his  ab- 
domen expressed  a  craving  for  Worcester  sauce.  It  ap- 
peared to  him  so  unobtainable  in  a  hospital  in  France. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  his  recovery  I  am  convinced 
that  the  bottle  which  we  procured  in  Boulogne  was  a 
good  investment. 

We  eagerly  awaited  the  illustrated  papers  each  week  for 
the  same  reason.  But  personal  interest  shown  in  them- 


THE  WAR  395 

selves,  by  the  time  spared  for  chatting,  was  far  the  most 
appreciated.  We  had  been  very  rightly  warned  against 
listening  to  the  wounded  men.  It  was  with  them  in  the 
base  hospitals  that  the  story  of  the  angels  of  Mons  origi- 
nated. I  never  met  any  one  personally  who  saw  anything 
nearer  the  supernatural  than  that  marvellous  fight  itself 
—  the  pluck  and  endurance  of  our  "  contemptible  little 
army."  But  some  claimed  to  have  seen  a  spirit  but  visible 
army,  such  as  Elijah  at  Dothan  showed  to  his  servant,  or 
Castor  and  Pollux  at  Lake  Regillus,  fighting  in  front  of 
our  lines.  A  Canadian  in  command  of  the  C.A.M.C.  con- 
tingent, who  treated  thousands  of  the  wounded  as  they 
came  back  from  the  front,  told  me  that  early  in  the  day 
he  heard  the  rumour,  and  ordered  his  men  to  ask  as  many 
as  possible  if  they  had  seen  any  such  phenomenon.  Not 
one  claimed  to  have  done  so.  Yet  a  few  days  later  from  the 
base  he  heard  a  great  many  of  these  same  men  had  de- 
clared that  they  had  seen  the  "angels."  He  considered 
that  the  whole  matter  arose  originally  through  some  hys- 
terical woman,  and  then  was  augmented  by  the  sugges- 
tion of  the  question  which  he  himself  had  put  to  them, 
made  to  men  shell-shocked  and  in  abnormal  mental  con- 
ditions. 

Among  other  deductions  from  voluminous  notes  I 
judged  that  the  Saxons  really  did  not  want  to  fight,  the 
impression  coming  from  so  many  different  sources.  Some 
said  that  they  let  us  know,  shouting  across  "No  Man's 
Land,"  that  they  did  not  wish  to  fight,  that  they  were 
Christians,  had  wives  and  children  of  their  own,  that  they 
did  not  want  to  kill  any  one,  and  would  fire  in  the  air 
when  forced  to  fire,  were  keen  to  renew  the  Christmas 
"pour-parlers."  Our  men  claimed  that  it  was  compara- 
tive peace  when  the  Saxons  were  in  the  trenches  opposite, 
and  they  made  friendly  overtures  as  often  as  they  dared. 


S96  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

They  were  capable  of  attributing  honour  to  others,  and 
those  who  came  over  into  our  hnes  asserted  that  hundreds 
were  anxious  to  do  so,  only  they  were  so  watched  from  be- 
hind. Moreover,  the  outrages  committed  by  the  Prus- 
sians under  flags  of  truce  had  made  it  impossible  for  our 
men  to  allow  any  one  to  approach.  To  sit  opposite  a 
Saxon  regiment  for  a  month  and  not  exchange  shots  ap- 
peared to  be  not  uncommon.  One  man  told  me  that  they 
poked  up  a  notice  on  their  bayonets  saying,  "We  are  not 
going  to  fight";  and  another  said  that  once  when  "straf- 
ing" somehow  commenced,  they  shouted  from  the  oppo- 
site trenches:  "Save  your  bullets.  You'll  need  them  to- 
night when  the  Prussian  Guard  relieves  us"  —  which 
proved  perfectly  true.  One  day  an  elderly  man  drawled  out 
of  their  trench,  came  to  our  barbed  wire,  and  called  out 
for  bread.  We  threw  him  a  loaf.  He  wrapped  up  some- 
thing in  his  cap  and  threw  it  over.  We  tossed  it  back  with 
more  bread,  but  when  he  went  back  he  left  the  watch 
behind. 

After  an  especially  brutal  piece  of  treachery,  our  men 
were  too  maddened  to  give  quarter,  and  one  said,  "A 
Saxon  might  have  had  a  chance  with  us  even  then,  but 
a  Prussian  would  have  had  about  as  little  as  a  beetle  at 
a  woodpecker's  prayer  meeting!"  The  Saxons,  on  the 
other  hand,  displayed  the  individual  courage  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  that  helped  to  lessen  our  losses  by  enabling  us  to 
attack  in  open  formation.  Every  animal  will  fight  when 
forced  to  do  so.  The  cowardly  wolf  will  attack  only  in 
packs;  and  one  of  the  main  reasons  for  the  wholesale 
holocausts  of  mass  attacks  seems  to  have  been  that  same 
lack  of  real  courage  in  the  boastful  and  militarist  element. 
He  dare  not  advance  alone. 

A  colonel  in  command  at  the  first  battle  of  the  Aisne 
described  to  me  an  incident  that  I  at  least  did  not  hear 


THE  WAR  397 

elsewhere.  He  said  that  the  Germans  opposite  him  came 
on  sixteen  abreast,  arm  in  arm,  rifles  at  the  trail  or  held 
anyhow.  They  were  singing  wildly,  and  literally  jumping 
up  and  down,  as  if  dancing.  Fire  was  reserved  till  they 
came  within  a  few  hundred  yards,  when  machine  guns 
started  to  mow  them  down.  Hay-pooks,  or  rather  man- 
pooks,  were  immediately  formed,  and  the  advancing 
column,  instead  of  coming  straight  on,  went  round  and 
round  the  ever-increasing  stacks.  He  believed  that  they 
had  been  filled  with  too  much  dope  or  too  much  doctored 
grog  of  some  kind. 

It  was  my  great  desire  before  returning  from  France 
to  see  the  conditions  at  the  front.  I  was  told  that  mem- 
bers of  American  Units  were  discouraged  from  visiting 
the  trenches.  Dr.  Carrel  had  twice  most  kindly  invited 
me  to  Compiegne  to  see  his  new  work  on  wounds,  but 
permission  to  accept  had  been  denied  me.  Being  a  British 
subject  and  wearing  a  British  decoration  on  an  Ameri- 
can uniform  only  seemed  to  worry  the  authorities.  I  had 
almost  abandoned  hope,  when  one  day  an  automobile 
stopped  at  our  headquarters,  just  at  the  close  of  my 
term  of  service,  and  a  colonel,  a  distinguished  scientist, 
jumped  out.  He  told  me  if  I  could  get  to  Medical  Head- 
quarters, then  at  St.  Omer,  he  could  arrange  for  me  to 
visit  each  of  the  four  armies  I  wished  to  see.  I  had  no 
permission  to  leave  the  base,  though  my  term  of  service 
expired  the  next  day.  I  had  no  passes,  and  our  British 
commandant  would  not  on  his  own  responsibility  either 
give  me  leave  or  lend  me  the  necessary  outfit.  He  would 
only  agree  to  look  the  other  way  if  I  went. 

Passing  the  sentries  was  not  difficult,  but  once  arrived 
in  St.  Omer,  it  was  essential  to  have  permission  from 
Headquarters  before  one  could  enter  any  house  or  hotel. 
I  was  accordingly  dumped  in  the  dark  streets  of  a  strange 


S98  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

town  and  told  to  be  at  that  exact  spot  again  in  two  hours, 
waiting  my  sponsor's  return.  Nor  did  he  say  where  he  was 
going,  in  case  we  failed  to  raeet,  for  no  one  was  allowed  to 
mention  the  whereabouts  of  the  G.H.Q.  After  two  hours 
were  over,  I  was  at  the  appointed  spot  with  that  pleasur- 
able sense  of  excitement  that  seldom  comes  after  one  has 
settled  down  in  life.  I  could  then  understand  better  how 
a  spy  must  feel.  The  town  naturally  was  unlit  for  fear  of 
aircraft,  and  yet  there  was  a  queer  feeling  that  every  one 
was  looking  at  you  as  you  walked  up  and  down  in  the  dark. 
My  colonel  friend  was  at  the  rendezvous  with  all  the 
precision  of  a  soldier,  not  only  with  the  necessary  papers 
and  arrangements  for  the  tour  of  inspection,  but  also  a 
genial  invitation  to  dine  at  Headquarters.  General  Sir 
Arthur  Sloggett  and  his  exceedingly  able  staff  opened  my 
eyes  very  considerably  before  the  evening  was  out  as  to 
the  methods  of  the  R.A.M.C.  in  war-time.  It  was  such  a 
revelation  to  me  that  I  felt  it  would  be  an  infinite  comfort 
to  those  with  loved  ones  in  the  trenches  to  realize  how 
marvellously  efficient  the  provision  for  the  care  of  the 
soldier's  health  had  become.  The  main  impression  on  my 
mind  was  the  extraordinary  developments  since  the  days 
of  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp.  Formerly,  so  long  as  he  was  fit 
to  fight,  the  soldier  was  always  looked  after.  Now  the 
soldier  unfit  to  fight  had  exactly  the  same  rights,  just  as 
after  the  war  let  us  trust  that  the  broken  soldier  will  be 
"seen  through"  back  into  civil  life.  I  was  honestly  sur- 
prised that  he  no  longer  depended  on  voluntary  gifts  to 
a  charitable  society  for  a  bandage  when  he  lay  wounded 
or  for  a  nurse  if  sickness  overtook  him.  The  marvellous 
system  of  the  medical  intelligence  department,  even  the 
separate  medical  secret  service,  worked  so  efficiently  that 
in  spite  of  the  awful  conditions  the  health  of  the  men  in 
the  line  was  twice  as  good  as  that  when  at  home  in  civil 


THE  WAR  399 

life.  Even  disease  approaching  from  the  enemy's  side  was 
*' spied,"  and  as  far  as  possible  forestalled.  All  sanitary 
arrangements,  all  water  supplies,  and  all  public  health 
matters  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Swiss  border  were 
handled  by  regular  army  oflficers.  For  the  first  time  in  his- 
tory the  medicals  were  considered  so  intimate  a  part  of 
the  fighting  force  that  doctors  held  the  same  rank  as  exec- 
utive officers.  I  was  a  major  —  no  longer  a  surgeon  major 
or  just  a  sanitary  official.  Those  in  command  were  even 
trusted  in  advance  with  information  as  to  what  would 
likely  be  required  of  them  on  any  part  of  the  front  by 
some  manoeuvre  or  attack,  though  I  do  not  think  that 
even  the  general  of  the  R.A.M.C.  was  admitted  to  the 
council  of  war. 

The  chart-room  of  the  G.H.Q.  was  another  revelation. 
The  walls  from  ceihng  to  floor  were  occupied  with  the 
usual  large-scale  maps,  with  flags  on  pins;  while  long, 
weird,  crooked  lines  of  all  colours  made  elaborate  tracings 
over  the  charts,  like  those  used  in  hospitals.  These  flags 
and  lines  indicated  the  surgical  and  medical  front,  where 
battles  with  typhoid,  trench  feet,  and  wounds  were  being 
waged  by  the  immense  army  of  workers  under  General 
Sloggett's  direction.  Laboratories  in  motor  cars,  special 
surgeons  and  ambulances  were  racing  here  and  there,  new 
hospitals  for  emergencies  were  being  pushed  in  different 
directions,  so  that  though  within  range  of  the  enemies' 
guns,  men  wounded  in  the  chest  or  abdomen  could  be 
treated  in  time  to  give  them  a  chance  for  their  Hves. 
Typhoid  recurring  in  any  section  of  the  line  might  mean 
the  reprimand  of  the  medical  officer  there;  trench  feet 
became  a  misdemeanour,  so  excellent  were  the  precau- 
tions devised  and  carried  out  by  the  N.C.O.'s. 

I  ventured  at  table  to  say  quite  truthfully  that  I,  a 
surgeon  from  a  base  hospital,  where  we  saw  endless  Red 


400  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

Cross  motor  ambulancies,  and  received  so  many  kind- 
nesses in  supplies,  and  especially  luxuries  for  our  wounded 
from  the  Red  Cross  officials,  had  been  under  the  impres- 
sion that  the  R.A.M.C.  was  a  sort  of  small  tail  to  a  very 
large  Red  Cross  kite,  owing  to  our  little  army  and  gen- 
eral unpreparedness  when  the  war  broke  out.  I  could  see 
that  to  my  surprised  hosts  I  appeared  to  be  mentally 
deficient,  but  I  was  able  to  assure  them  that  there  were 
tens  of  thousands  who  knew  even  less  than  that,  and 
thought  that  the  chances  still  were  that  if  their  loved  ones 
were  hurt,  they  might  be  left  to  die  because  some  one  had 
not  given  their  annual  contribution  to  a  society.  It  seemed 
a  very  serious  omission  that  the  public  had  not  the  in- 
formation that  would  carry  so  much  consolation  with  it. 
The  British  Red  Cross  has  every  one's  love  and  support, 
but  its  function  in  war,  as  one  officer  said,  must  increas- 
ingly become,  in  relation  to  the  R.A.M.C,  that  of  a 
Sunday-school  treat  to  the  staff  of  the  school. 

The  officialdom  of  Germany  and  even  of  France  had 
always  contrasted  very  unfavourably  in  my  mind  with 
our  English  methods.  I  was  surprised  in  America  that  so 
many  hospitals  were  Government  institutions,  and  yet 
worked  so  well. 

At  Melville  we  turned  aside  to  inspect  what  was  ap- 
parently a  second  Valley  of  Hinnom.  It  was  a  series  of 
furnaces,  built  out  of  clay  and  old  cans,  efficiently  dis- 
posing of  the  garbage  of  a  town  and  a  large  section  of 
the  line.  At  West  Outre  an  officer  found  time  to  show 
us  his  ingenious  improvised  laundry.  His  share  was  to 
fight  the  enemy  by  keeping  our  boys  decently  clean;  and 
for  this  purpose  he  collected  their  dirty  linen  into  huge 
piles.  He  had  diverted  the  only  available  brook  so  as  to 
put  a  portable  building  over  it.  His  battalion  consisted 
of  the  whole  female  strength  of  the  country-side,  and 


THE  WAE  401 

had  to  be  prepared  to  advance  or  retire  pari  passu  with 
the  other  fighters.  The  chattering,  shouting  crowd,  al- 
most invisible  in  the  fog  of  steam  as  we  walked  through, 
made  me  realize  how  diflScult  a  command  this  regiment 
of  washerwomen  constituted.  The  triumph  was  that 
they  all  appeared  to  be  contented  and  fraternal. 

As  every  one  knows  one  of  the  worst  problems  of  the 
trenches  was  vermin.  We  entered  a  huge  building  used 
in  peace-time  for  the  purposes  of  dyeing.  A  Jack  Johnson 
had  only  just  exploded  in  the  moat  that  brought  the 
water  to  the  tanks,  but  provision  was  made  for  trifles  of 
this  kind.  When  we  peered  over  the  edge  of  a  steaming 
vat,  it  was  to  discover  a  platoon  of  Tommies  enjoying 
the  "time  of  their  lives,"  before  they  joined  the  line  of 
naked  beings,  each  scrubbing  the  now  happy  man  ahead. 
An  endless  stream  of  garments  advanced  through  electric 
superheaters  in  parallel  columns.  There  seemed  as  much 
excitement  about  the  chance  of  every  man  getting  his 
own  clothing  back  as  there  is  in  the  bran  pie  at  a  chil- 
dren's Christmas  party. 

While  visiting  the  mud  and  squalor  of  a  front  trench 
in  Flanders,  only  a  few  yards  from  the  enemy's  lines, 
the  cheery  occupants  offered  to  brew  some  tea,  exactly 
as  we  "boil  our  kettle"  and  have  a  good  time  in  the 
safety  of  our  Northern  backwoods.  One  day  I  picked  up 
some  bright  blue  crystals.  They  proved  to  be  "blue- 
stone,"  or  sulphate  of  copper.  When  my  pilot  noticed 
that  its  presence  puzzled  me,  he  remarked  casually, 
"There  was  a  regimental  dressing-station  there  a  day 
or  so  ago.  Probably  that  is  the  remains  of  it." 

On  a  siding  at  Calais  station  a  veritable  pyramid  of 
filth  met  my  eyes.  On  inspection  it  proved  to  be  odd  old 
boots  dug  from  the  mud  of  the  battle-fields,  and,  sorted 
out  from  the  other  endless  piles  of  debris,  brought  back 


402  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

as  salvage.  To  attack  one  pair  of  such  boots  is  depres- 
sing. Melancholia  alone  befitted  the  pile.  Yet  I  saw 
close  at  hand,  through  a  series  of  sheds,  this  polluted 
current  entering  and  coming  out  at  the  other  end  new 
boots,  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand  pairs  a  day — the  talis- 
man not  being  a  Henry  Ford  of  boot-making,  but  just 
a  smiling  English  colonel  in  the  sporting  trousers  of  a 
mounted  officer. 

The  ground  was  still  under  snow,  and  we  drove  over 
much  ice  and  through  much  slush  as  we  returned  to  our 
base  at  Boulogne.  My  colleagues  had  gone  back  to 
America  and  it  was  a  terribly  lonely  journey  to  London, 
though  both  steamer  and  train  were  crowded.  The  war 
was  not  yet  won,  and  I  could  not  help  feeling  an  intense 
desire  to  remain  and  see  it  through  with  the  brave,  gen- 
erous-hearted men  who  were  giving  their  lives  for  our 
sakes.  Loneliness  scarcely  describes  my  sensations;  it  felt 
more  like  desertion.  One  road  to  despair  would  be  the 
awful  realization  that  one  is  not  wanted.  The  work  loom- 
ing ahead  was  the  only  comforting  element,  with  the 
knowledge  that  the  best  of  wives  and  partners  was  wait- 
ing in  London  to  help  me  out. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

FORWAKD  STEPS 

My  return  to  the  work  after  serving  in  France  was  em- 
bittered by  a  violent  attack  made  upon  me  in  a  St.  John's 
paper.  It  was  called  forth  by  a  report  of  a  lecture  in 
Montreal  where  I  had  addressed  the  Canadian  Club. 
The  meeting  was  organized  by  Newfoundlanders  at  the 
Ritz  Carlton  Hotel,  and  the  fact  that  a  large  number 
from  the  Colony  were  present  and  moved  the  vote  of 
thanks  at  the  end  should  have  been  sufficient  guarantee 
of  the  bona  fides  of  my  statements.  But  the  over-enthu- 
siastic account  of  a  reporter  who  unfortunately  was  not 
present  gave  my  critics  the  chance  for  which  they  were 
looking.  It  was  at  a  time  when  any  criticism  whatever 
of  a  country  that  was  responding  so  generously  to  the 
homeland's  call  for  help  would  have  been  impolitic, 
even  if  true.  It  subsequently  proved  one  factor,  however, 
in  obtaining  the  commission  of  inquiry  from  the  Govern- 
ment, and  so  far  was  really  a  blessing  to  our  work.  In 
retrospect  it  is  easy  to  see  that  all  things  work  together 
for  good,  but  at  the  time,  oddly  enough,  even  if  such 
reports  are  absolutely  false,  they  hurt  more  than  the 
point  of  a,  good  steel  knife.  Anonymous  letters,  on  the 
contrary,  with  which  form  of  correspondence  I  have 
a  bowing  acquaintance,  only  disturb  the  waste-paper 
basket. 

The  Governor,  the  representatives  of  our  Council,  the 
Honourable  Robert  Watson  and  the  Honourable  W.  C. 
Job,  and  my  many  other  fast  friends,  however,  soon 
made  it  possible  for  me  to  forget  the  matter.  If  protest 
breeds  opposition,  it  in  turn  begets  apposition,  and  a 


404  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

good  line  of  demarcation  —  a  "no  man's  land"  between 
friend  and  foe  —  and  gives  a  healthy  atmosphere  in  so- 
called  times  of  peace. 

In  the  year  1915  a  large  cooperative  store  was  estab- 
lished at  Cape  Charles  near  Battle  Harbour,  which 
bred  such  opposition  amongst  certain  merchants  that 
it  proved  instrumental  also  in  obtaining  for  us  the  Gov- 
ernment commission  of  inquiry  sent  down  a  few  months 
later.  After  a  thorough  investigation  of  St.  Anthony, 
Battle  Harbour,  Cape  Charles,  Forteau,  Red  Bay,  and 
Flowers  Cove,  summoning  every  possible  witness  and 
tracing  all  rumours  to  their  source,  the  commissioners' 
findings  were  so  favourable  to  the  Mission  that  on  their 
return  to  St.  John's  our  still  imdaunted  detractors  could 
only  attribute  it  to  supernatural  agencies. 

My  colleague  at  Battle  Harbour,  Dr.  John  Grieve, 
who  with  his  wife  had  already  given  us  so  many  years' 
work  there,  and  whose  interest  in  the  cooperative  effort 
at  Cape  Charles  was  responsible  for  its  initial  success, 
had  worked  out  a  plan  for  a  winter  hospital  station  in 
Lewis  Bay,  and  had  surveyed  the  necessary  land  grant. 
Through  the  resignation  of  our  business  manager,  Mr. 
Sheard,  and  the  selection  of  Dr.  Grieve  by  the  directors 
as  his  successor,  only  that  part  of  the  Lewis  Bay  scheme 
which  enables  us  to  give  work  in  winter  providing  wood 
supplies  has  so  far  materialized. 

In  1915  also,  at  a  place  called  Northwest  River,  one 
hundred  and  thirty  miles  up  Hamilton  Inlet  from  Indian 
Harbour,  a  little  cottage  hospital  and  doctor's  house 
combined  was  built,  called  the  "Emily  Beaver  Cham- 
berlain Memorial  Hospital."  Thus  the  work  of  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  Paddon  has  been  converted  into  a  continuous  serv- 
ice, for  formerly  when  Indian  Harbour  Hospital  was 
closed  in  the  fall,  they  had  no  place  in  which  they  could 


FORWARD  STEPS  405 

efficiently  carry  on  their  work  during  the  winter  months. 
Before  Dr.  Paddon  came  to  the  coast,  Dr.  and  Mrs. 
Norman  Stewart  gave  us  several  years  of  valuable  ser- 
vice, spending  their  summers  at  Indian  Harbour  and 
returning  for  the  winter  to  St.  Anthony,  according  to  my 
original  plan  when  I  first  built  St.  Anthony  Hospital. 

An  old  friend  and  worker  at  St.  Anthony,  Mr.  John 
Evans  of  Philadelphia,  who  had  helped  us  with  our  deer 
and  other  problems,  having  married  our  head  nurse,  the 
first  whom  we  had  ever  had  from  Newfoundland,  found 
it  essential  to  return  and  take  up  remunerative  work  at 
home. 

The  increasing  number  of  patients  seeking  help  at  St. 
Anthony  made  it  necessary  to  provide  proportionately 
increasing  facilities.  As  I  have  stated  elsewhere,  the 
sister  of  my  splendid  colleague,  Dr.  Little,  in  1909  had 
raised  the  money  for  the  new  wing  of  the  hospital  for  the 
accommodation  of  the  summer  accession  of  patients. 
The  clinic  which  had  now  grown  so  tremendously,  due 
to  Dr.  Little's  magnificent  work,  was  maintaining  a 
permanent  house  surgeon,  Dr.  Louis  Fallon,  who  had 
faithfully  served  the  Mission  at  different  times  at  other 
stations.  We  had  also  regular  dental  and  eye  departments. 

The  summer  of  1917  was  saddened  for  us  all  by  the 
loss  to  the  work  of  my  beloved  and  able  colleague.  Dr. 
John  Mason  Little,  Jr.,  who  had  given  ten  years  of  most 
valuable  labour  to  the  people  of  this  coast.  He  had 
married,  some  years  before,  our  delightful  and  unselfish 
helper.  Miss  Ruth  Keese,  and  they  now  had  four  little 
children  growing  up  in  St.  Anthony.  The  education  of 
his  family  and  the  call  of  other  home  ties  made  him  feel 
that  it  had  become  essential  for  him  to  terminate  his 
more  intimate  connection  with  the  North,  and  he  left  us 
to  take  up  medical  work  in  Boston.  The  loss  of  them  both 


406  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

was  a  very  heavy  one  to  the  work  and  to  us  personally, 
and  we  are  only  thankful  that  we  have  been  able  to 
secure  Dr.  Little's  invaluable  assistance  and  advice  on 
our  Board  of  Directors  in  Boston.  This  coast  and  this 
hospital  owe  him  a  tremendous  debt  which  can  never 
be  repaid,  for  it  was  he  who  put  this  clinic  in  a  position 
to  hold  up  its  head  among  the  best  of  medical  work,  and 
offer  to  this  far-off  people  the  grade  of  skilled  assistance 
which  we  should  wish  for  our  loved  ones  if  they  were  ill 
or  in  trouble.  For  Dr.  Little  offered  not  only  his  very 
exceptional  skill  as  a  surgeon,  but  also  the  gift  of  his 
inspiring  and  devoted  personality. 

The  winter  of  1917-18  was  extremely  severe,  not  only 
in  our  North  country,  but  in  the  United  States  and 
Canada  also.  I  was  lecturing  during  this  winter  in  both 
these  latter  countries,  though  during  the  months  of 
December  and  January  travelKng  became  very  difficult 
owing  to  the  continuous  blizzards.  I  was  held  up  for 
three  days  in  Racine,  Wisconsin,  as  neither  trains,  electric 
cars,  or  automobiles  could  make  their  way  through  the 
heavy  drifts.  Had  I  had  my  trusty  dog  team,  however, 
I  should  not  have  missed  three  important  lecture  en- 
gagements. Life  in  the  North  has  its  compensations. 

At  Toronto  I  was  xmfortunate  enough  to  contract 
bronchitis  and  pleurisy,  and  I  understand  from  com- 
petent observers  that  I  was  an  "impossible  patient." 
Be  that  as  it  may,  so  much  pressure  was  brought  to  bear 
on  me  that  at  last  I  was  forced  to  obey  the  doctors  and 
leave  for  a  month's  rest  in  a  warmer  climate. 

Owing  to  ice  and  war  conditions  we  did  not  arrive  in 
St.  Anthony  until  the  first  of  July.  In  arriving  late  we 
were  all  spared  a  terrible  shock.  The  previous  day  some 
of  the  boys  from  the  Orphanage  had  gone  fishing  in  the 
Devil's  Pond,  about  a  mile  away,  and  a  favourite  resort 


THE  LABRADOR  DOCTOR  IN  WINTER 


FORWARD  STEPS  407 

with  them.  Unfortunately  that  afternoon  they  were 
seized  with  the  brilhant  idea  of  kindling  a  fire  with  which 
to  cook  their  trout.  Greatly  to  the  astonishment  of  the 
would-be  cooks,  the  fire  quickly  got  beyond  the  one 
desired  for  culinary  purposes,  and,  panic-stricken,  they 
rushed  home  to  give  the  alarm.  Every  man  ashore  and 
afloat  came  and  worked,  and  the  obliteration  of  the  place 
was  saved  by  a  providential  change  in  the  wind  and 
wide  fire-breaks  cut  through  few  and  ill-to-be-spared 
trees.  Everything  had  been  taken  from  our  house  — 
even  furniture  and  linen  —  and  dragged  to  the  wharf 
head,  where  terrified  children,  fleeing  patients,  and 
heaps  of  furnishings  from  the  orphanage  and  elsewhere 
were  all  piled  up.  Schooners  had  been  hauled  in  to  carry 
off  what  was  possible,  and  the  patients  in  the  hospital 
were  got  ready  to  be  carried  away  at  a  moment's  notice. 
Only  the  most  strenuous  efforts  saved  the  entire  station. 
Now  all  our  beautiful  sky-line  is  blackened  and  charred. 
All  day  long  the  gravity  of  the  debt  was  in  our  hearts, 
for  if  the  wooden  buildings  had  once  had  the  clouds  of 
fiery  sparks  settle  upon  them,  the  whole  of  those  de- 
pendent upon  us  would  have  been  homeless.  Surely  in  a 
country  like  this,  the  incident  of  this  fire  puts  an  added 
emphasis  upon  our  need  of  brick  buildings.  Gratitude 
for  our  safe  return,  for  all  God's  mercies  to  us,  and  joy 
over  the  outcome  of  the  at  one  time  apparently  inevitable 
disaster,  made  our  first  day  of  the  season  a  never-to-be- 
forgotten  event. 

Mr.  W.  R.  Stirling,  our  Chicago  director,  who  had  per- 
sonally visited  the  hospitals,  insisted  that  a  water  supply 
must  at  all  costs  be  secured  both  for  hospital  and  orphan- 
age. This  was  not  only  to  avert  the  reproach  of  typhoid 
epidemics,  two  of  which  had  previously  occurred,  but 
also  to  better  our  protection  for  so  many  helpless  lives  in 


408  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

old  dry  wooden  buildings,  and  to  economize  the  great 
expense  of  hauling  water  by  dogs  every  winter,  when  our 
little  surface  reservoir  was  frozen  to  the  bottom.  This 
water  supply  has  only  just  been  finished;  and  now  we 
cannot  understand  how  we  ever  existed  without  it.  But 
it  is  an  unromantic  object  to  which  to  give  money,  and 
the  total  cost,  even  doing  the  work  ourselves,  amounted 
to  just  upon  ten  thousand  dollars.  According  to  the  Gov- 
ernment engineer's  advice  we  had  a  stream  to  dam  and  a 
mile  and  a  quarter  of  piping  to  lay  six  feet  imderground 
to  prevent  the  water  freezing.  It  is  only  in  very  few  places 
that  we  boast  six  feet  of  soil  at  all  on  the  rock  that  forms 
the  frame  of  Mother  Earth  here.  Hence  there  was  much 
blasting  to  do.  But  the  task  was  accomplished,  and  by 
our  own  boys,  and  has  successfully  weathered  our  bitter 
winter.  The  last  lap  was  run  by  an  intensely  interesting 
experiment.  The  assistant  at  Emmanuel  Church  in  Bos- 
ton brought  down  a  number  of  volunteer  Boy  Scouts  to 
give  their  services  on  the  commonplace  task  of  digging 
the  remainder  of  the  trench  necessary  to  complete  the 
water  supply.  When  they  first  arrived,  our  Northern  out- 
side man,  after  looking  at  their  clothes  of  the  Boston  cut, 
remarked,  "Hm.  You'd  better  give  that  crowd  some 
softer  job  than  digging."  But  they  did  the  work,  and  a 
whole  lot  more  besides.  For  their  grit  and  jollity,  and 
above  all  their  readiness  to  tackle  and  see  through  such 
side  tasks  as  unloading  and  stowing  away  some  three 
hundred  tons  of  coal  were  real  "missionary"  lessons. 

The  ever-growing  demand  for  doctors  as  the  war 
dragged  on  made  it  harder  and  harder  to  man  our  far-off 
stations.  The  draft  in  America  was  the  last  straw,  doctors 
having  already  been  forbidden  to  leave  England  or  Can- 
ada. Dr.  Charles  Curtis  had  taken  over  Dr.  Little's  work 
at  St.  Anthony,  and  stood  nobly  by,  getting  special  per- 


FORWARD  STEPS  409 

mission  to  do  so.  Dr.  West,  who  had  succeeded  our  col- 
league, Dr.  Mather  Hare,  at  Harrington,  when  his  wife's 
breakdown  had  obhged  him  to  leave  us,  had  already 
given  us  a  year  over  his  scheduled  time,  for  he  had  ac- 
cepted work  in  India  at  the  hands  of  those  who  had 
specially  trained  him  for  that  purpose. 

We  had  been  having  considerable  trouble  in  the  accom- 
modation of  the  heavy  batches  of  patients  that  came  by 
the  mail  boat.  They  were  left  on  the  wharf  when  she 
steamed  away,  and  only  the  floors  of  our  treatment  and 
waiting-rooms  were  available  for  their  reception.  For  all 
could  not  possibly  go  into  the  wards,  where  children,  and 
often  very  sick  patients,  were  being  cared  for.  The  people 
around  always  stretched  their  hospitality  to  the  limit, 
but  this  was  a  very  undesirable  method  of  housing  sick 
persons  temporarily.  Owing  to  the  generosity  of  a  lady  in 
New  Bedford  and  other  friends,  we  were  enabled  to  meet 
the  problem  by  the  erection  of  a  rest  house,  with  first  and 
second  class  accommodation.  This  was  built  in  the  spring 
of  1917,  and  has  been  a  Godsend  to  many  besides  pa- 
tients. It  makes  people  free  to  come  to  St.  Anthony  and 
stay  and  benefit  by  whatever  it  has  to  offer,  without  the 
feeling  that  they  have  no  place  to  which  they  can  go. 
Moreover,  this  hostel  has  been  entirely  self-supporting 
from  the  day  that  it  opened,  and  every  one  who  goes  and 
comes  has  a  good  word  for  the  rest  house.  It  is  run  by  one 
of  our  Labrador  orphan  boys,  whose  education  was  fin- 
ished in  America,  and  "Johnnie,"  as  every  one  calls  him, 
is  already  a  feature  in  the  life  of  the  place. 

Among  the  advances  of  the  year  1918  must  also  be 
noted  that  more  subscribers  and  subscriptions  from  local 
friends  have  been  received  than  ever  before.  Our  X-ray 
department  has  been  added  to.  We  have  been  able  also 
to  improve  the  roads,  a  thing  greatly  to  be  desired. 


410  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

'  Look  where  we  will,  we  have  nothing  but  gratitude 
that  in  the  last  year  of  a  long  and  exhausting  war,  here 
in  this  far-away  section  of  the  world,  the  keynote  has 
been  one  of  progress. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION 

What  is  the  future  of  this  Mission?  I  have  once  or  twice 
been  an  unwilling  listener  to  a  discussion  on  this  point. 
It  has  usually  been  in  the  smoking-room  of  a  local  mail 
steamer.  The  subtle  humour  of  W.  W.  Jacobs  has  shown 
us  that  pessimism  is  an  attribute  of  the  village  "pub" 
also.  The  alcoholic  is  always  a  prophet  of  doom;  and  the 
wish  is  often  father  to  the  thought. 

In  our  medical  work  in  the  wilds  we  have  become  a  re- 
pository of  some  old  instruments  discarded  on  the  death 
of  their  owners  or  cast  aside  by  the  advancing  tide  of 
knowledge.  Seeing  the  ingenuity,  time,  and  expense  lav- 
ished on  many  of  them,  they  would  make  a  truly  pathetic 
museum.  Personally  I  prefer  the  habits  of  India  to  those 
of  Egypt  concerning  the  departed.  If  the  Pharaoh  of  the 
Persecution  could  see  his  mummy  being  shown  to  tourists 
as  a  cheap  side  show,  I  am  sure  that  he  would  vote  for 
cremation  if  he  had  the  choice  over  again. 

It  sounds  flippant  in  one  who  has  devoted  his  life  to  this 
work  to  say,  "Really  I  don't  care  what  its  future  may 
be."  I  am  content  to  leave  the  future  with  God.  No  true 
sportsman  wants  to  linger  on,  a  wretched  handicap  to  the 
cause  for  which  he  once  stood,  like  a  fake  hero  with  his 
peg  leg  and  a  black  patch  over  one  eye.  The  Christian 
choice  is  that  of  Achilles.  Nature  also  teaches  us  that  the 
paths  of  progress  are  marked  by  the  discarded  relics  of 
what  once  were  her  corner-stones.  The  original  Moses 
had  the  spirit  of  Christ  when  he  said,  "If  Thou  wilt,  for- 
give their  sin  —  and  if  not,  I  pray  Thee,  blot  me  out  of 
Thy  book."  The  heroic  Paul  was  willing  to  be  eliminated 


412  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

for  the  Kingdom  of  God.  It  seems  to  me  that  that  atti- 
tude is  the  only  credential  which  any  Christian  mission 
can  give  for  its  existence.  If  I  felt  that  my  work  had 
accomplished  all  it  could,  I  would  "lay  it  down  with  a 
will." 

As  in  India  and  China  the  missionaries  of  the  various 
societies  are  uniting  to  build  up  a  native,  national  Church 
which  would  wish  to  assume  the  responsibility  of  caring 
for  its  own  problems,  so  when  the  Government  of  this 
country  is  willing  and  able  to  take  over  the  maintenance 
of  the  medical  work,  this  Mission  would  have  justified  its 
existence  by  its  elimination.  All  lines  along  which  the 
Mission  works  should  one  day  become  self-eliminating. 
Until  that  time  arrives  I  am  satisfied  that  the  Mission 
has  great  opportunities  before  it.  I  am  an  optimist,  and 
feel  certain  that  God  will  provide  the  means  to  continue 
as  long  as  the  need  exists. 

Some  believe  that  the  future  of  this  population  depends 
solely  on  the  attention  paid  to  the  development  of  the 
resources  of  the  coast.  Not  only  are  its  raw  products  more 
needed  than  ever,  but  even  supposing  that  unscientific 
handling  of  them  has  depleted  the  supply,  still  there  is 
ample  to  maintain  a  larger  population  than  at  present. 
This  can  only  be  when  science  and  capital  are  introduced 
here,  combined  with  an  educated  manhood  fired  by  the 
spirit  of  cooperation. 

In  large  parts  of  China  a  famine  to  wipe  out  surplus 
population  is  apparently  a  periodical  necessity.  An  or- 
phanage in  India  for  similar  reasons  does  not  seem  to  be 
as  rationally  economic  as  one  for  the  Labrador  children. 
I  never  see  a  cliff  face  from  which  an  avalanche  has  re- 
moved the  supersoil  and  herbage  without  thinking  in 
pity  of  the  crowded  sections  of  China,  where  tearing  up 
even  the  roots  of  trees  for  fuel  has  permitted  so  much 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION         413 

arable  land  to  be  denuded  by  rains  that  the  food  supply 
gets  smaller  while  the  population  grows  larger. 

The  future  of  all  medical  work  depends  on  whether 
people  want  it  and  can  arrange  to  get  it  paid  for.  If  all  the 
world  become  Christian  Scientists,  scientific  —  which  we 
believe  to  be  also  Christian  —  healing  will  everywhere 
die  a  natural  death  —  and  possibly  the  people  also.  But 
history  suggests  that  the  healing  art  is  one  of  considerable 
vitality.  My  own  belief  is  that  in  the  apparently  ap- 
proaching socialistic  age,  medicine  will  be  communized 
and  provided  by  the  State  free  to  all.  If  education  for  the 
mind  is,  why  not  education  for  the  body.? 

Certain  subtle  and  very  vital  psychic  influences  are 
probably  the  best  stock  in  trade  of  the  "Doctor  of  the  old 
school."  These  qualities  appear  at  present  less  likely  to 
be  "had  for  hire"  in  a  Government  official.  The  Chinese 
may  yet  return  the  missionary  compliment  by  teaching 
us  to  adopt  their  method  of  paying  the  doctor  only  when 
and  as  long  as  the  patient  is  cured. 

Out  of  the  taxes,  the  major  part  of  which  is  paid  by  the 
people  of  the  outport  districts  in  this  Colony,  the  Gov- 
ernment provides  free  medical  aid  in  the  Capital,  pre- 
sumably because  those  who  have  the  spending  of  the 
money  mostly  reside  there.  The  Mission  provides  it  in  the 
farthest  off  and  poorest  part  of  the  country,  Labrador 
and  North  Newfoundland,  because  there  is  no  chance 
whatever  at  present  for  the  poor  people  to  obtain  it  other- 
wise. Our  j)ro  rata  share  of  the  taxes,  if  judged  by  the  pal- 
try Government  grant  toward  the  work,  would  not  pro- 
vide anything  worth  having.  The  people  here  pay  far 
better  in  proportion  to  their  ability  for  hospital  privileges 
than  they  do  in  Boston  or  London;  the  Government  pays 
a  little,  and  the  rest  comes  from  the  loving  gifts  of  those 
who  desire  nothing  better,  when  they  know  of  real  need, 
than  to  make  sacrifices  to  meet  it. 


414  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

One  feels  that  the  Chinese  and  Japanese  and  all  na- 
tions will  be  able  some  day  to  pay  for  their  own  doctors, 
whether  they  do  it  on  individualistic  or  communistic 
principles.  In  the  present  state  of  the  world  I  believe  the 
missionary  enterprise  to  be  entirely  desirable,  or  I  would 
not  be  where  I  am.  But  being  a  Christian  with  a  little 
faith,  I  hope  that  it  may  not  be  so  forever.  If  anything 
will  stimulate  to  better  methods,  it  is  example,  not  pre- 
cept, and  perhaps  the  best  work  of  this  and  all  missions 
will  be  their  reflex  influences  on  Governments  through 
the  governed. 

To  carry  on  the  bare  essentials  of  this  work  an  endow- 
ment of  at  least  a  million  dollars  is  necessary.  Toward  this 
a  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  dollars  is  all  that  has  been 
contributed,  and  in  addition  we  can  count  annually  upon 
a  small  Government  grant.  Even  if  this  million  dollars 
were  given,  it  would  still  leave  several  thousand  dollars 
to  be  raised  by  voluntary  subscription  each  year,  a 
healthy  thing  for  the  life  of  any  charitable  work.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  certainty  of  being  able  to  meet  the  main 
bills  is  an  economy  in  nerve  energy,  in  time  and  in  money. 

Among  our  patients  brought  in  one  season  to  St.  An- 
thony Hospital  was  the  mother  of  ten  children  on  whom 
an  emergency  operation  for  appendicitis  had  to  be  done 
—  the  first  time  in  her  life  that  a  doctor  had  ever  tended 
her.  She  came  from  a  very  poor  home,  for  besides  her 
large  family  her  husband  had  been  all  his  life  handi- 
capped by  a  serious  deformity  of  one  leg  caused  by  a  fall. 
She  reminded  me  of  how  some  years  before  a  traveller 
had  left  her  the  rug  from  his  dog  sledge,  as,  without  any 
bedclothes,  she  was  again  about  to  give  birth  to  a  child; 
how  she  had  actually  been  unable  at  times  to  turn  over 
in  bed,  because  her  personal  clothing  had  frozen  solid  to 
the  wall  of  the  one-roomed  hut  in  which  she  lived. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION         415 

In  April,  1906,  in  northern  Newfoundland  I  found  a 
young  mother  near  St.  Anthony.  She  was  twenty-six 
years  old,  suffering  from  acute  rheumatic  fever,  lying  in 
a  fireless  loft,  on  a  rickety  bedstead  with  no  bedclothes. 
She  had  only  one  shoddy  black  dress  to  her  name,  and 
no  underwear  to  keep  her  warm  in  bed  in  a  house  like 
that.  The  floor  was  littered  with  debris,  including  a  num- 
ber of  hard  buns  which  she  could  not  now  eat,  but  which 
some  charitable  neighbour  had  sent  her.  She  had  a  wiz- 
ened baby  of  seven  months,  which  every  now  and  then 
she  was  trying  to  feed  by  raising  herself  on  one  elbow  and 
forcing  bread  and  water  pap,  moistened  with  the  merest 
suspicion  of  condensed  milk,  down  its  throat.  None  of  her 
four  previous  children  had  lived  so  long.  She  had  been 
under  my  care  three  years  before  for  sailor's  scurvy.  Her 
present  illness  lasted  only  a  week,  and  in  spite  of  all  that 
we  could  do,  she  died. 

The  desire  of  the  people  to  be  mutually  helpful  is 
undoubted,  whether  it  is  to  each  other  or  to  some  "out- 
sider" like  ourselves.  I  question  if  in  the  so-called  centres 
of  civilization  the  following  incident  can  be  surpassed  as 
evidencing  this  aspect  of  their  character. 

In  a  little  Labrador  village  called  Deep  Water  Creek  I 
was  called  in  one  day  to  see  a  patient :  an  old  Englishman, 
who  was  reported  to  have  had  *'a  bad  place  this  twelve- 
month." As  I  was  taken  into  the  tiny  cottage,  a  bright- 
faced,  black-bearded  man  greeted  me.  Three  children 
were  playing  on  the  hearth  with  a  younger  man,  evi- 
dently their  father.  "No,  Doctor,  they  are  n't  ours,"  re- 
plied my  host,  in  answer  to  my  question.  "But  us  took 
Sam  as  our  own  when  he  was  born,  and  his  mother  lay 
dead.  These  be  his  little  ones.  You  remember  Kate,  his 
wife,  what  died  in  hospital." 
^  After  the  cup  of  hot  tea  so  thoughtfully  provided,  I 


416  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

said,  "Skipper  John,  let's  get  out  and  see  the  old  Eng- 
lishman." 

"No  need,  Doctor.  He's  upstairs  in  bed." 

Upstairs  was  the  triangular  space  between  the  roof  and 
the  ceiling  of  the  ground  floor.  At  each  end  was  a  tiny 
window,  and  the  whole  area,  windows  included,  had  been 
divided  longitudinally  by  a  single  thickness  of  hand- 
sawn  lumber.  Both  windows  were  open,  a  cool  breeze 
was  blowing  through,  and  a  bright  paper  pasted  on  the 
wall  gave  a  cheerful  impression.  One  corner  was  shut  off 
by  a  screen  of  cheap  cheesecloth.  Sitting  bolt  upright  on 
a  low  bench,  and  leaning  against  the  partition,  was  a  very 
aged  woman,  staring  fixedly  ahead  out  of  blind  eyes,  and 
ceaselessly  monotoning  what  was  meant  for  a  hymn. 
No  head  was  visible  among  the  rude  collection  of  bed- 
clothes. 

"Uncle  Solomon,  it's  the  Doctor,"  I  called.  The  mass 
of  clothes  moved,  and  a  trembling  old  hand  came  out  to 
meet  mine. 

"No  pain.  Uncle  Solomon,  I  hope.^^" 

"No  pain,  Doctor,  thank  the  good  Lord,  and  Skip- 
per John.  He  took  us  in  when  the  old  lady  and  I  were 
starving." 

The  terrible  cancer  had  so  extended  its  ravages  that 
the  reason  for  the  veiled  corner  was  obvious,  and  also  for 
the  effective  ventilation. 

"He  suffers  a  lot.  Doctor,  though  he  won't  own  it," 
now  chimed  in  the  old  woman. 

When  the  interview  was  over,  I  was  left  standing  in  a 
brown  study  till  I  heard  Skipper  John's  voice  calling  me. 
As  I  descended  the  ladder  he  said:  "We're  so  grateful 
you  comed.  Doctor.  The  poor  old  creatures  won't  last 
long.  But  thanks  are  n't  dollars.  I  have  n't  a  cent  in  the 
world  now.  The  old  people  have  taken  what  little  we  had 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION         417 

put  by.  But  if  I  gets  a  skin  t'  winter,  I  '11  try  and  pay  you 
for  your  visit  anyhow." 

"Skipper  John,  what  relation  are  those  people  to  you? " 

"Well,  no  relation  'zactly." 

"Do  they  pay  nothing  at  all.?" 

"Them  has  nothing,"  he  replied. 

"What  made  you  take  them  in.''" 

"They  was  homeless,  and  the  old  lady  was  already 
blind." 

"How  long  have  they  been  with  you?" 

"Just  twelve  months  come  Saturday." 

I  found  myself  standing  in  speechless  admiration  in  the 
presence  of  this  man.  I  thought  then,  and  I  still  think, 
that  I  had  received  one  of  my  largest  fees. 

Ours  is  primarily  a  medical  mission,  and  nothing  that 
may  have  been  stated  in  this  book  with  reference  to  other 
branches  of  the  work  is  meant  in  any  way  to  detract  from 
what  to  us  as  doctors  is  the  basic  reason  for  our  being 
here,  though  we  mean  ours  to  be  prophylactic  as  well  as 
remedial  medicine. 

St.  Anthony  having  so  indisputably  become  the  head- 
quarters of  the  hospital  stations,  there  can  be  but  one 
answer  to  the  question  of  the  advisability  of  its  closing 
its  doors  summer  or  winter  in  the  days  to  come.  For  not 
only  is  our  largest  hospital  located  there  —  its  scope  due 
in  great  measure  to  the  reputation  gained  for  it  by  Dr. 
Little's  splendid  services,  and  continued  by  Dr.  Curtis 
—  but  also  the  Children's  Home,  our  school,  machine 
shop,  the  headquarters  of  various  industrial  enterprises, 
and  lastly  a  large  storehouse  to  be  used  in  future  as  a 
distributing  centre  for  the  supplies  of  the  general  Mis- 
sion. Moreover,  the  population  of  the  environs  of  St. 
Anthony,  owing  to  their  numbers  and  the  fact  that  they 
can  profit  by  the  employment  given  by  the  Mission, 


418  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

should  be  able  increasingly  to  assist  in  the  maintenance 
of  this  hospital,  though  a  large  number  of  its  clinic  is 
drawn  from  distant  parts.  These  patients  come  not  only 
from  Labrador,  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  and  southern 
Newfoundland,  but  we  have  had  under  our  care  Syri- 
ans, Russians,  Scandinavians,  Frenchmen,  and  naturally 
Americans  and  Canadians,  seamen  from  schooners  en- 
gaged in  the  Labrador  fishery. 

Harrington  Hospital,  located  on  the  Canadian  Labra- 
dor, must  for  many  years  to  come  depend  on  outside  sup- 
port. I  am  Lloyd  Georgian  enough  to  feel  that  taxation 
should  presuppose  the  obligation  to  look  after  the  bodies 
of  the  taxed.  The  Quebec  Government  gives  neither  vote, 
representation,  adequate  mail  service,  nor  any  public 
health  grant  for  the  long  section  of  the  coast  ^which  it 
claims  to  govern,  that  lies  west  of  the  Point  des  Eskimo. 
It  is  to  my  mind  a  severe  stricture  on  their  qualifications 
as  legislators.  That  hospital  should,  we  believe,  be  ade- 
quately subsidized  and  kept  open  summer  and  winter. 
At  present  we  have  to  thank  the  Labrador  Medical  Mis- 
sion, which  is  the  Canadian  branch  of  the  International 
Grenfell  Association,  for  their  generous  and  continued 
support  of  this  station. 

Battle  Harbour  and  Indian  Harbour  Hospitals  can 
never  be  anything  but  summer  stations,  owing  to  their 
geographical  positions  on  islands  in  frozen  seas,  on  which 
islands  there  is  practically  no  population  during  the  win- 
ter months.  But  gifts  and  grants  sufficient  to  maintain  a 
doctor  at  Northwest  River  Cottage  Hospital,  and  one  if 
possible  in  Lewis  Bay,  winter  supplements  to  these  sum- 
mer hospitals,  are  to  my  thinking  more  than  justifiable. 

As  to  the  future  of  our  hospital  stations  at  Pilley's 
Islands,  Spotted  Islands,  and  Forteau,  that  will  depend 
upon  the  changing  demands  of  local  conditions.  That  the 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION         419 

need  of  medical  assistance  exists  is  unquestionable,  as  is 
evidenced  from  the  many  appeals  which  I  receive  to  start 
hospitals  or  supply  doctors  in  districts  at  present  utterly 
incapable  of  obtaining  such  help. 

One  still  indispensable  requisite  in  our  scattered  field  of 
work  is  a  hospital  steamer.  In  fact,  not  a  few  of  us  think 
that  the  Strathcona  is  the  keystone  of  the  Mission.  She 
reaches  those  who  need  our  help  most  and  at  times  when 
they  cannot  afford  to  leave  home  and  seek  it.  Her  func- 
tions are  innumerable.  She  is  our  eyepiece  to  keep  us 
cognizant  of  our  opportunities.  She  both  treats  and  car- 
ries the  sick  and  feeds  the  hospitals.  She  enables  us  to 
distribute  our  charity  efficiently.  The  invaluable  gifts  of 
clothing  which  the  Labrador  Needlework  Guild  and  other 
friends  send  us  could  never  be  used  at  all  as  love  would 
wish,  unless  the  Strathcona  were  available  to  enlarge  the 
area  reached.  In  spite  of  all  this,  those  who  would  quibble 
over  trifles  claim  that  she  is  the  only  craft  on  record  that 
rolls  at  dry-dock !  Her  functions  are  certainly  varied,  but 
perhaps  the  oddest  which  I  have  ever  been  asked  to  per- 
form was  an  incident  which  I  have  often  told.  One  day, 
after  a  long  stream  of  patients  had  been  treated,  a  young 
man  with  a  great  air  of  secrecy  said  that  he  wanted  to 
see  me  very  privately. 

"I  wants  to  get  married.  Doctor,"  he  confided  when 
we  were  alone. 

*'Well,  that's  something  in  which  I  can't  help  you. 
Won't  any  of  the  girls  round  here  have  you.^*" 

"Oh!  it  is  n't  that.  There's  a  girl  down  North  I  fancies, 
but  I  'm  shipped  to  a  man  here  for  the  summer,  and  can't 
get  away.  Would  n't  you  just  propose  to  her  for  me,  and 
bring  her  along  as  you  comes  South.''" 

The  library  would  touch  a  very  limited  field  if  it  were 
not  for  the  hospital  ship.  She  carries  half  a  hundred  trav- 


420  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

elling  libraries  each  year.  She  finds  out  the  derelict  chil- 
dren and  brings  them  home.  She  is  often  a  court  of  law, 
trying  to  dispense  justice  and  help  right  against  might. 
She  has  enabled  us  to  serve  not  only  men,  but  their  ships 
as  well;  and  many  a  helping  hand  she  has  been  able  to 
lend  to  men  in  distress  when  hearts  were  anxious  and 
hopes  growing  faint.  In  a  thousand  little  ways  she  is  just 
as  important  a  factor  in  preaching  the  message  of  love. 
To-day  she  is  actually  loaned  for  her  final  trip,  before 
going  into  winter  quarters,  to  a  number  of  heads  of  fam- 
ilies, who  are  thus  enabled  to  bring  out  fuel  for  their  win- 
ter fires  from  the  long  bay  just  south  of  the  hospital. 

Her  plates  are  getting  thin.  They  were  never  anything 
but  three-eighths-inch  steel,  and  we  took  a  thousand 
pounds  of  rust  out  of  her  after  cabin  alone  this  spring. 
She  leaks  a  little  —  and  no  iron  ship  should.  It  will  cost 
two  thousand  dollars  to  put  her  into  repair  again  for 
future  use.  Money  is  short  now,  but  when  asked  about 
the  future  of  the  Mission  I  feel  that  whatever  else  will  be 
needed  for  many  years  to  come,  the  hospital  ship  at  least 
cannot  possibly  be  dispensed  with. 

The  child  is  potential  energy,  the  father  of  the  future 
man,  and  the  future  state;  and  the  children  of  this  coun- 
try are  integral,  determining  factors  in  the  future  of  this 
Mission.  The  children  who  are  turned  out  to  order  by 
institutions  seem  sadly  deficient,  both  in  ability  to  cope 
with  life  and  in  the  humanities.  The  "home"  system,  as 
at  Quarrier's  in  Scotland,  is  a  striking  contrast,  and  per- 
sonally I  shall  vote  for  the  management  of  orphanages 
on  home  lines  every  time.  This  is  not  a  concession  to 
Dickens,  whose  pictures  of  Bumble  I  hope  and  believe 
apply  only  to  the  dark  ages  in  which  Dickens  lived; 
but  historically  they  are  not  yet  far  enough  removed 
for  me  to  advocate  Government  orphanages,  though  our 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION         421 

Government  schools  are  an  advance  on  Dotheboys 
Hall.  . 

The  human  body  is  the  result  of  physical  causes;  breed- 
ing tells  as  surely  as  it  does  in  dogs  or  cows,  and  the  prob- 
ability of  defects  in  the  offspring  of  poverty  and  of  lust 
is  necessarily  greater  than  in  well-bred,  well-fed,  well- 
environed  children.  The  proportion  of  mentally  and  mor- 
ally deficient  children  that  come  to  us  absolutely  demon- 
strates this  fact;  and  the  love  needed  to  see  such  children 
through  to  the  end  is  more  comprehensive  than  the  mere 
sentiment  of  having  a  child  in  the  home,  and  infinitely 
more  than  the  desire  to  have  the  help  which  he  can  bring. 

The  Government  allows  us  fifty-two  dollars  a  year 
toward  the  expense  of  a  child  whose  father  is  dead; 
nothing  if  the  mother  is  dead,  or  if  the  father  is  alive  but 
had  better  be  dead.  It  would  be  wiser  if  each  case  could 
be  judged  on  its  merits  by  competent  ofl&cials.  But  we 
believe  it  is  a  blessing  to  a  community  to  have  the  oppor- 
tunity of  finding  the  balance. 

Tested  by  its  output  and  the  returns  to  the  country, 
our  orphanage  has  amply  justified  itseff.  One  new  life 
resultant  from  the  outlay  of  a  few  dollars  would  class  the 
investment  as  gilt-edged  if  graded  merely  in  cash.  The 
community  which  sows  a  neglected  childhood  reaps  a 
whirlwind  in  defective  manhood. 

In  view  of  these  facts  —  to  leave  out  of  consideration 
my  earnest  personal  desire  —  there  can  never  be  any 
question  in  my  mind  as  to  the  imperative  necessity  of  the 
Mission's  continuance  of  the  work  for  derelict  children. 
This  conclusion  seems  to  me  safeguarded  by  the  fact  that 
all  nations  are  placing  increasing  emphasis  on  *'the  child 
in  the  midst  of  them.** 

When  Solomon  chose  wisdom  as  the  gift  which  he  most 
desired,  the  Bible  tells  us  that  it  was  pleasing  to  God. 


422  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

St.  Paul  holds  out  the  hope  that  one  day  we  shall  know 
as  we  are  known.  But  there  is  a  vast  difference  between 
knowledge  and  being  wise.  In  fact,  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment itself  we  are  led  to  believe  that  the  devils  knew  far 
more  than  even  the  Disciples. 

The  school  is  an  essential  part  of  the  orphanage.  Seeing 
that  the  village  children  needed  education  just  as  much 
as  those  for  whom  we  were  more  directly  responsible,  and 
realizing  the  value  to  both  of  the  cooperation,  and  that 
the  denominational  system  which  still  persists  in  the 
country  is  a  factor  for  division  and  not  for  unity,  it  be- 
came obviously  desirable  for  us  to  provide  such  a  bond. 
Friends  made  the  building  possible.  The  generosity  of  a 
lady  in  Chicago  in  practically  endowing  it  has,  we  feel, 
secured  its  future.  We  have  now  a  proper  building,  three 
teachers,  a  graded  school,  modern  appliances  for  teaching, 
and  vastly  superior  results.  In  these  days  when  the  ex- 
penditure of  every  penny  seems  a  widow's  mite,  one  wel- 
comes the  encouragement  of  facts  such  as  these  to  enable 
one  to  "carry  on." 

Modern  pedagogy  has  brought  to  the  attention  of  even 
the  man  in  the  street  the  realization  that  education  con- 
sists not  merely  in  its  accepted  scholastic  aspect,  but  also 
that  training  of  the  eye  and  hand  which  in  turn  fosters 
the  larger  development  of  the  mind.  In  the  latter  sense 
our  people  are  far  from  uneducated.  Taking  this  aptitude 
of  theirs  as  a  starting-point,  some  twelve  years  ago  we 
began  our  industrial  department,  first  by  giving  out  skin 
work  in  the  North,  and  later  started  other  branches  under 
Miss  Jessie  Luther,  who  subsequently  gave  many  years 
of  service  to  the  coast. 

The  cooperative  movement  is  the  same  question  seen 
from  another  angle,  and  is  almost  contemporaneous  with 
our  earliest  hospitals. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  MISSION         423 

It  is  not  unnatural  that  man,  realizing  that  he  is  him- 
self like  "the  grass  that  to-morrow  is  cast  into  the  oven," 
should  worry  over  the  permanency  of  the  things  on  which 
he  has  spent  himself.  Though  Christ  especially  warns  us 
against  this  anxiety,  religious  people  have  been  the  great- 
est sinners  in  laying  more  emphasis  upon  to-morrow  than 
to-day.  The  element  which  makes  most  for  longevity  is 
always  interesting,  even  if  longevity  is  often  a  mistake. 
Almost  every  old  parish  church  in  England  maintains 
some  skeleton  of  bygone  efforts  which  once  met  real 
needs  and  were  tokens  of  real  love. 

The  future  is  a  long  way  off  — that  future  when  Christ's 
Kingdom  comes  on  earth  in  the  consecrated  hearts  and 
wills  of  all  mankind,  when  all  the  superimposed  efforts 
will  be  unnecessary.  But  love  builds  for  a  future,  how- 
ever remote;  and  at  present  we  see  no  other  way  than  to 
work  for  it,  and  know  of  no  better  means  than  to  insure 
the  permanency  of  the  hospitals,  orphanage,  school,  and 
the  industrial  and  cooperative  enterprises,  thus  to  hasten, 
however  little,  the  coming  of  Christ  in  Labrador. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

MY  RELIGIOUS  LIFE 

No  one  can  write  his  real  religious  life  with  pen  or  pencil. 
It  is  written  only  in  actions,  and  its  seal  is  our  character, 
not  our  orthodoxy.  Whether  we,  our  neighbour,  or  God  is 
the  judge,  absolutely  the  only  value  of  our  "religious" 
life  to  ourselves  or  to  any  one  is  what  it  fits  us  for  and 
enables  us  to  do.  Creeds,  when  expressed  only  in  words, 
clothes,  or  abnormal  lives,  are  daily  growing  less  accept- 
able as  passports  to  Paradise.  What  my  particular  intel- 
lect can  accept  cannot  commend  me  to  God.  His  "well 
done"  is  only  spoken  to  the  man  who  "wills  to  do  His 
will." 

We  map  the  world  out  into  black  and  white  patches 
for  "heathen"  and  "Christian"  —  as  if  those  who  made 
the  charts  believed  that  one  section  possessed  a  monopoly 
of  God's  sonship.  Europe  was  marked  white,  which  is  to- 
day comment  enough  on  this  division.  A  black  friend  of 
mine  used  often  to  remind  me  that  in  his  country  the 
Devil  was  white. 

My  own  religious  experiences  divide  my  life  into  three 
periods.  As  a  boy  at  school,  and  as  a  young  man  at  hospi- 
tal, the  truth  or  untruth  of  Christianity  as  taught  by  the 
churches  did  not  interest  me  enough  to  devote  a  thought 
to  it.  It  was  neither  a  disturbing  nor  a  vital  influence  in 
my  life.  My  mother  was  my  ideal  of  goodness.  I  have 
never  known  her  speak  an  angry  or  unkind  word.  Sitting 
here  looking  back  on  over  fifty  years  of  life,  I  cannot  pick 
out  one  thing  to  criticize  in  my  mother. 

What  did  interest  me  was  athletics.  Like  most  Eng- 
lish boys  I  almost  worshipped  physical  accomplishments. 


MY  RELIGIOUS  LIFE  425 

I  had  the  supremest  contempt  for  clothes  except  those 
designed  for  action  or  comfort.  Since  no  saint  apparently 
ever  wore  trousers,  or  appeared  to  care  about  football 
knickers,  I  never  supposed  that  they  could  be  the  same 
flesh  as  myself.  It  was  always  a  barrier  between  me  and 
the  parsons  and  religious  persons  generally  that  they 
affected  clothing  which  dubbed  my  ideals  "worldly."  It 
was  even  a  barrier  between  myself  and  the  Christ  that 
I  could  not  think  of  Him  in  flannels  or  a  gymnasium  suit. 
At  that  time  I  should  have  considered  such  an  idea  blas- 
phemous —  whatever  that  meant.  As  soon  as  religious 
services  ceased  to  be  compulsory  for  me,  I  only  attended 
them  as  a  concession  to  others.  The  prime  object  of  the 
prayers  and  lessons  did  not  appear  to  be  that  they  might 
be  understood.  So  far  as  I  could  see,  common  sense  and 
plain  natural  feelings  were  at  a  discount.  A  long  heritage 
of  an  eager,  restless  spirit  left  me  uninterested  in  "hom- 
ilies," and  aided  by  the  "dim  religious  light,"  I  was  en- 
abled to  sleep  through  both  long  prayers  and  sermons. 
Justice  forces  me  to  add  that  the  two  endless  hours  of 
"prep"  lessons  after  tea  had  very  much  the  same  effect 
upon  me. 

At  the  request  of  my  mother  I  once  went  to  take  a  class 
at  the  Sunday  School.  These  were  for  the  "poor  only"  in 
England  in  those  days.  Little  effort  was  expended  on 
making  them  attractive.  I  recall  nothing  but  disgust  at 
the  dirty  urchins  with  whom  I  had  to  associate  for  half 
an  hour.  An  incident  which  happened  on  the  death  of  one 
of  the  boys  at  my  father's  school  interested  me  tempora- 
rily in  religion.  The  boy's  father  happened  to  be  a  dis- 
senter, and  our  vicar  refused  to  allow  the  gates  of  the 
parish  churchyard  to  be  opened  to  enable  the  funeral  cor- 
tege to  enter.  My  chum  had  only  a  legal  right  to  be  buried 
in  the  yard.  The  coffin  had  therefore  to  be  lifted  over  the 


426  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

wall  and  as  the  church  was  locked,  father  conducted  the 
service  in  the  open  air.  His  words  at  the  grave-side  gave  a 
touch  of  reality  to  religion,  and  still  more  so  did  his  walk- 
ing down  the  aisle  out  of  church  the  following  Sunday 
when  the  vicar  referred  to  the  destructive  influence  of 
anything  that  lent  colour  to  dissent.  Later  when  father 
threw  up  the  school  for  the  far  more  onerous  and  less 
remunerative  task  of  chaplain  at  the  London  Hospital, 
even  I  realized  that  religion  meant  something.  Indeed,  it 
was  that  tax  on  his  sensitive,  nervous  brain  that  brought 
his  life  to  its  early  close.  No  man  ever  had  a  more  gener- 
ous and  soft-hearted  father.  He  never  refused  us  any 
reasonable  request,  and  very  few  unreasonable  ones,  and 
allowed  us  an  amount  of  self-determination  enjoyed  by 
few.  How  deeply  and  how  often  have  I  regretted  that  I 
did  not  understand  him  better.  His  brilliant  scholarship, 
and  the  friends  that  it  brought  around  him,  his  ability 
literally  to  speak  Greek  and  Latin  as  he  could  German 
and  French,  his  exceptionally  developed  mental  as  com- 
pared with  his  physical  gifts,  were  undoubtedly  the  rea- 
sons that  a  very  ordinary  English  boy  could  not  appreciate 
him. 

At  fourteen  years  of  age,  at  Marlborough  School,  I  was 
asked  if  I  wished  to  be  confirmed.  Every  boy  of  that  age 
was.  It  permitted  one  to  remain  when  "the  kids  went  out 
after  first  service."  It  added  dignity,  like  a  football  cap  or 
a  mustache.  All  I  remember  about  it  was  bitterly  resent- 
ing having  to  "swat  up"  the  Catechism  out  of  school 
hours.  I  counted,  however,  on  the  examiner  being  easy, 
and  he  was.  I  am  an  absolute  believer  in  boys  making  a 
definite  decision  to  follow  the  Christ;  and  that  in  the 
hands  of  a  really  keen  Christian  man  the  rite  of  confirma- 
tion is  very  valuable.  The  call  which  gets  home  to  a  boy's 
heart  is  the  call  to  do  things.  If  only  a  boy  can  be  led  to 


MY  RELIGIOUS  LIFE  427 

see  that  the  following  of  Christ  demands  a  real  knight- 
hood, and  that  true  chivalry  is  Christ's  service,  he  will 
want  all  the  rites  and  ceremonies  that  either  proclaim  his 
allegiance  or  promise  him  help  and  strength  to  live  up 
to  it. 

What  I  now  believe  that  D.  L.  Moody  did  for  me  was 
just  to  show  that  under  all  the  shams  and  externals  of 
religion  was  a  vital  call  in  the  world  for  things  that  I 
could  do.  This  marks  the  beginning  of  the  second  period 
of  my  religious  development.  He  helped  me  to  see  myself 
as  God  sees  the  "unprofitable  servant,"  and  to  be 
ashamed.  He  started  me  working  for  all  I  was  worth, 
and  made  religion  real  fun  —  a  new  field  brimming  with 
opportunities.  With  me  the  pendulum  swung  very  far. 
The  evangelical  to  my  mind  had  a  monopoly  of  infallible 
truth.  A  Roman  Catholic  I  regarded  as  a  relic  of  medise- 
valism;  while  almost  a  rigour  went  down  my  spine  when 
a  man  told  me  that  he  was  a  "Unitarian  Christian." 
Hyphenation  was  loyalty  compared  to  that.  I  mention 
this  only  because  it  shows  how  I  can  now  understand 
intolerance  and  dogmatism  in  others.  Yes,  I  must  have 
been  "very  impossible,"  for  then  I  honestly  thought  that 
I  knew  it  all. 

About  this  time  I  began  to  be  interested  in  reading  my 
Bible,  and  I  learned  to  appreciate  my  father's  expositions 
of  it.  At  prayers  he  always  translated  into  the  vernacular 
from  the  original  of  either  the  Old  or  the  New  Testa- 
ment. To  me  he  seemed  to  know  every  sense  of  every 
Greek  word  in  any  setting.  Ever  since  I  have  been  satis- 
fied to  use  an  English  version,  knowing  that  I  cannot 
improve  on  the  words  chosen  by  the  various  learned 
translators. 

Because  I  owed  so  much  to  evangelical  teachers,  it 
worried  me  for  a  long  while  that  I  could  not  bring  myseK 


428  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

to  argue  with  my  boys  about  their  intellectual  attitude  to 
Christ.  My  Sunday  class  contained  several  Jews  whom 
I  loved.  I  respected  them  more  because  they  made  no 
verbal  professions.  I  have  seen  Turkish  religionists  danc- 
ing and  whirling  in  Asia  Minor  at  their  prayers.  I  have 
seen  much  emotional  Christianity,  and  I  fully  realize  the 
value  of  approaching  men  on  their  emotional  side.  A 
demonstrative  preacher  impresses  large  crowds  of  people 
at  once.  But  all  the  same,  I  have  learned  from  many  dis- 
illusionments  to  be  afraid  of  overdoing  emotionalism  in 
religion.  Summing  up  the  evidence  of  men's  Christlike- 
ness  by  their  characters,  as  I  look  back  down  my  long  list 
of  loved  and  honoured  helpers  and  friends,  I  am  certainly 
safe  in  saying  that  I  at  least  should  judge  that  no  section 
of  Christ's  Church  has  any  monopoly  of  Christ's  spirit; 
and  that  I  should  like  infinitely  less  to  be  examined  on  my 
own  dogmatic  theology  than  I  should  thirty-five  years 
ago.  Combined  with  this  goes  the  fact  that  though  I  know 
the  days  of  my  stay  on  earth  are  greatly  reduced,  I  seem  to 
be  less  rather  than  more  anxious  about  "the  morrow." 
For  though  time  has  rounded  off  the  corners  of  my  con- 
ceit, experience  of  God's  dealing  with  such  an  unworthy 
midget  as  myself  has  so  strengthened  the  foundations  on 
which  faith  stood,  that  Christ  now  means  more,  to  me  as 
a  living  Presence  than  when  I  laid  more  emphasis  on  the 
dogmas  concerning  Him. 

This  chapter  would  not  be  complete  without  an  en- 
deavour to  face  the  task  of  trying  to  answer  the  questions 
so  often  asked:  "What  is  your  position  now.^  Do  you 
still  believe  as  you  did  when  you  first  decided  to  serve 
Christ?"  I  am  still  a  communicant  member  "in  good 
standing"  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  One  hopes  that  one's 
religious  ideas  grow  like  the  rest  of  one's  life.  It  is  fools 
who  are  said  to  rush  in  where  angels  fear  to  tread.  The 


MY  RELIGIOUS  LIFE  429 

most  powerful  Christian  churches  in  the  worid,  the  Greek 
and  the  Roman,  recognizing  the  great  dangers  threaten- 
ing, have  countered  by  stereotyping  the  answer  for  all 
time,  assuming  all  responsibility,  and  permitting  no  indi- 
vidual freedom  in  the  matter.  The  numbers  of  their  ad- 
herents testify  to  how  vast  a  proportion  of  mankind  the 
course  appeals.  And  yet  we  are  sons  of  God  —  and  at  our 
best  value  freedom  in  every  department  of  our  being  — 
spirit  as  well  as  mind  and  body.  George  Adam  Smith 
says:  "The  great  causes  of  God  and  humanity  are  not 
defeated  by  the  hot  assaults  of  the  Devil,  but  by  the  slow, 
crushing,  glacier-like  mass  of  thousands  and  thousands 
of  indifferent  nobodies.  God's  causes  are  never  destroyed 
by  being  blown  up,  but  by  being  sat  upon.  It  is  not  the 
violent  and  anarchical  whom  we  have  to  fear  in  the  war 
for  human  progress,  but  the  slow,  the  staid,  the  respect- 
able; and  the  danger  of  these  lies  in  their  real  skepticism. 
Though  it  would  abhor  articulately  confessing  that  God 
does  nothing,  it  virtually  means  so  by  refusing  to  share 
manifest  opportunities  for  serving  Him." 

Feeble  and  devious  as  my  own  footsteps  have  been 
since  my  decision  to  follow  Jesus  Christ,  I  believe  more 
than  ever  that  this  is  the  only  real  adventure  of  life.  No 
step  in  life  do  I  even  compare  with  that  one  in  permanent 
satisfaction.  I  deeply  regret  that  I  did  not  take  it  sooner. 
I  do  not  feel  that  it  mattered  much  whether  I  chose  medi- 
cine for  an  occupation,  or  law,  or  education,  or  commerce, 
or  any  other  way  to  justify  my  existence  by  working  for 
a  living  as  every  honest  man  should.  But  if  there  is  one 
thing  about  which  I  never  have  any  question,  it  is  that 
the  decision  and  endeavour  to  follow  the  Christ  does  for 
men  what  nothing  else  on  earth  can.  Without  stultifying 
our  reason,  it  develops  all  that  makes  men  godlike.  Christ 
claimed  that  it  was  the  only  way  to  find  out  truth. 


430  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

To  me,  enforced  asceticism,  vows  of  celibacy,  de- 
nunciation of  pleasures  innocent  in  themselves,  intel- 
lectual monopoly  of  interpretation  of  things  past  or 
present,  written  or  unwritten,  are  travesties  of  common 
sense,  which  is  to  me  the  Voice  within.  Not  being  a 
philosopher,  I  do  not  classify  it,  but  I  listen  to  it,  be- 
cause I  believe  it  to  be  the  Voice  of  God.  That  is  the 
first  point  which  I  have  no  fear  in  putting  on  record. 

The  extraordinary  revelations  of  some  Power  outside 
ourselves  leading  and  guiding  and  helping  and  chasten- 
ing are,  I  am  certain,  really  the  ordinary  experiences  of 
every  man  who  is  willing  to  accept  the  fact  that  we  are 
sons  of  God.  Only  a  child,  however,  who  submits  to  his 
father  can  expect  to  enjoy  or  understand  his  dealings.  If 
we  look  into  our  everyday  life  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that 
God  not  only  allows  but  seeks  our  coSperation  in  the 
establishment  of  His  Kingdom.  So  the  second  funda- 
mental by  which  I  stand  is  the  certainty  of  a  possible 
real  and  close  relationship  between  man  and  God.  Not 
one  qualm  assails  my  intellect  or  my  intuition  when  I 
say  that  I  know  absolutely  that  God  is  my  Father.  To 
live  "as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible"  is  my  one  ideal 
which  embraces  all  the  lesser  ideals  of  my  life. 

It  has  been  my  lot  in  life  to  have  to  stand  by  many 
death-beds,  and  to  be  called  in  to  dying  men  and  women 
almost  as  a  routine  in  my  profession.  Yet  I  am  increas- 
ingly convinced  that  their  spirits  never  die  at  all.  I  am 
sure  that  there  is  no  real  death.  Death  is  no  argument 
against,  but  rather  for,  life.  Eternal  life  is  the  complement 
of  all  my  unsatisfied  ideals;  and  experience  teaches  me 
that  the  belief  in  it  is  a  greater  incentive  to  be  useful  and 
good  than  any  other  I  know. 

I  have  read  "Raymond"  with  great  interest.  I  am 
neither  capable  nor  willing  to  criticize  those  who,  with 


MY  RELIGIOUS  LIFE  431 

the  deductive  ability  of  such  men  as  Sir  Oliver  Lodge, 
are  brave  enough  and  unselfish  enough  to  devote  their 
talents  to  pioneering  in  a  field  that  certainly  needs  and 
merits  more  scientific  investigation,  seeing  that  it  has 
possibilities  of  such  great  moment  to  mankind. 

The  experiences  on  which  rest  one's  own  convictions 
of  continuing  life  are  of  an  entirely  different  nature. 
Even  though  the  first  and  personal  reason  may  seem 
foolish,  it  is  because  I  desire  it  so  much.  This  is  a  natural 
passion,  common  to  all  human  beings.  Experience  con- 
vinces me  that  such  longings  are  purposeful  and  do  not 
go  unsatisfied. 

No,  we  do  not  know  everything  yet;  and  perhaps  the 
critic  is  a  shallower  fool  than  he  judges  to  be  the  patient 
delvers  into  the  unknown  beyond.  The  evidence  on 
which  our  deductions  have  been  based  through  the  ages 
may  suddenly  be  proven  fallible  after  all.  It  may  be  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  matter.  Chemists  and  physicists 
now  admit  that  is  possible.  The  spiritual  may  be  far 
more  real  than  the  material,  in  spite  of  the  cocksure  con- 
ceit of  the  current  science  of  1918.  Immortality  may  be 
the  complement  of  mortality,  as  water  becomes  steam, 
and  steam  becomes  power,  and  power  becomes  heat,  and 
heat  becomes  light.  The  conclusion  that  life  beyond  is 
the  conservation  of  energy  of  life  here  may  be  as  scien- 
tific as  that  great  natural  law  for  material  things.  I  see 
knowledge  become  service,  service  become  joy.  I  see  fear 
prohibit  glands  from  secreting,  hope  bring  back  colour 
to  the  face  and  tone  to  the  blood.  I  see  something  not 
material  make  Jekyl  into  Hyde;  and  thank  God,  make 
Hyde  over  into  Jekyl  again,  when  birch  rods  and  iron 
bars  have  no  effect  whatever.  I  have  seen  love  do  phys- 
ical things  which  the  mere  intellectual  convictions  can- 
not—  make  hearts  beat  and  eyes  sparkle,  that  would 


432  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

not  respond  even  to  digitalis  and  strychnine.  I  claim 
that  the  boy  is  justified  in  saying  that  his  kite  exists 
in  the  heaven,  even  though  it  is  out  of  sight  and  the 
string  leads  round  the  corner,  on  no  other  presumption 
than  that  he  feels  it  tugging.  I  prefer  to  stand  with 
Moses  in  his  belief  in  the  Promised  Land,  and  that  we 
can  reach  it,  than  to  beheve  that  the  Celestial  City  is  a 
mirage. 

This  attempted  analysis  of  my  religious  life  has  re- 
vealed to  me  two  great  changes  in  my  position  toward 
its  intellectual  or  dogmatic  demands,  and  both  of  them 
are  reflections  of  the  ever  rightly  changing  attitude  of  the 
defenders  of  our  Christian  faith.  "Tempora  mutantur  et 
nos  mutamus  in  illis."  Christians  should  not  fret  because 
they  cannot  escape  adapting  themselves  to  the  envi- 
ronment of  1918  —  which  is  no  longer  that  of  918,  or 
18.  The  one  and  only  hope  for  any  force,  Christianity 
no  less  than  others,  is  its  ability  to  adapt  itself  to  all 
time. 

I  still  study  my  Bible  in  the  morning  and  scribble  on 
the  margin  the  lessons  which  I  get  out  of  the  portion.  I 
can  only  do  it  by  using  a  new  copy  each  time  I  finish,  be- 
cause it  brings  new  thoughts  according  to  the  peculiar 
experiences,  tasks,  needs,  and  environments  of  the  day. 
I  change  I  know.  It  does  not  —  and  yet  it  does  —  for 
we  see  the  old  truths  in  new  lights.  That  to  me  is  the  glory 
of  the  Scriptures.  Somehow  it  suits  itself  always  to  my  de- 
veloping needs.  Christ  did  not  teach  as  did  other  teachers. 
He  taught  for  all  time.  We  find  out  that  our  attitude  to 
everything  changes,  to  the  things  that  give  us  pleasure 
and  to  those  that  give  us  pain.  It  is  but  a  sign  of  healthy 
evolution  (in  this  chapter,  I  suppose  I  should  call  it 
"grace")  that  the  great  churches  have  ceased  to  condemn 
their  leaders  who  are  imsound  on  points  which  once  spelt 


MY  RELIGIOUS  LIFE  433 

fagot  and  stake.  To-day  predestination  no  longer  involves 
the  same  reaction,  even  if  dropped  into  a  conference  of 
selected  "Wee  Frees."  The  American  section  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church  has  omitted  to  insist  on  our  publicly  and 
periodically  declaring  that  we  must  have  a  correct  view 
of  three  Incomprehensibles,  or  be  damned,  as  is  still  the 
case  in  our  Church  of  England. 

I  am  writing  of  my  religion.  The  churches  are  now  teach- 
ing that  religion  is  action,  not  diction.  There  was  a  time 
when  I  could  work  with  only  one  section  of  the  Church 
of  God.  Thank  God,  it  was  a  very  brief  period,  but  I 
weep  for  it  just  the  same.  Now  I  can  not  only  work  with 
any  section,  but  worship  with  them  also.  If  there  is  error 
in  their  intellectual  attitudes,  it  is  to  God  they  stand, 
not  to  me.  Doubtless  there  is  just  as  much  error  in  mine. 
To  me,  he  is  the  best  Christian  who  "judges  not."  To 
claim  a  monopoly  of  Christian  religion  for  any  church, 
looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  following  Jesus  Christ, 
is  ridiculous.  So  I  find  that  I  have  changed,  changed  in  the 
importance  which  I  place  on  what  others  think  and  upon 
what  I  myself  think. 

Unless  a  Christian  is  a  witness  in  his  life,  his  opinions 
do  not  matter  two  pins  to  God  or  man.  Of  course,  to-day 
we  should  not  burn  Savonarola,  any  more  than  we  should 
actually  crucify  that  brave  old  fisherman,  Peter,  or  ridi- 
cule a  Gordon  or  a  Livingstone,  or  assassinate  a  Lincoln 
or  a  Phillips  Brooks,  even  with  our  tongues,  though  they 
differed  from  us  in  their  view  of  what  the  Christian  re- 
ligion really  needs.  Oh,  of  course  we  should  n't! 

Perhaps  my  change  spells  more  and  not  less  faith  in 
the  Saviour  of  the  world.  As  I  love  the  facts  of  life  more, 
I  care  less  for  fusty  commentators.  As  I  see  more  of 
Christ's  living  with  us  all  the  days,  I  care  less  for  argu- 
ments about  His  death.  I  have  no  more  doubt  that  He 


434  A  LABRADOR  DOCTOR 

lives  in  His  world  to-day  than  that  I  do.  Why  should  I 
blame  myself  because  more  and  more  my  mind  empha- 
sizes the  fact  that  it  is  because  He  lives,  and  only  so  far 
as  He  lives  in  me,  that  I  shall  live  also? 


THE  END 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Agriculture,  in  Labrador,  unsuccess- 
ful, 217,  290. 

Alaska,  reindeer  experiment  in,  291; 
294-295. 

Albert,  the,  hospital  ship  of  Dr.  Gren- 
fell,  125,  188,  189. 

Among  the  Deep-Sea  Fishers,  maga- 
zine, 280. 

Andrews,  Dr.  Joseph,  eye-specialist, 
357. 

Archibald,  Sir  William,  chairman  of 
the  Royal  National  Mission  to 
Deep-Sea  Fishermen,  362. 

Armstrong,  Dr.  Seymom*,  his  work  at 
St.  Anthony,  367. 

Arnold,  Thomas,  of  Rugby,  14. 

Athletics,  Grenfell's  fondness  of,  21, 
32,  44,  50.  51,  53,  81,  424. 

Bailey,  Florence,  nurse,  326. 
Barnett,  Samuel,  of  Mile  End,  head 

of  Toynbee  House,  83. 
Barter  system,  the  evils  of,  131,  132, 

133-138,  215-217. 
Bartlett,  Captain,  father  of  "Captain 

Bob,"  136. 
Battle  Harbour,  Newfoundland,  site 

of  hospital,     126,    162,    165,    169, 

193. 
Beattie,  Arthur,  192. 
Beetz,  Mr.,  239. 

Begbie,  Harold,  Twice-Born  Men,  101. 
Bell,  Dr.  Alexander  Graham,  338. 
Belle  Isle,  the   Straits   of,  Labrador, 

126,  127,  140,  250. 
Besant,  Mrs.  Annie,  associated  with 

Charles  Bradlaugh,  81,  82. 
Blandford,  Captain  Samuel,  159,  172. 
Bobardt,  Dr.  Arthur,  126,  159-162. 
Booth,  Walter,  of  New  York,  370,  371. 
Bowditch,  William,  275. 
Boys'  Brigade,  the,  101,  353. 
Bradlaugh,  Charles,  religious  radical, 

81-82. 

Cabot,  John,  120. 

Carpenter,  Rev.  C.  C,  241,  242. 

Carrel,  Dr.  Alexis,  in  France,  397. 


Cartier,  Jacques,  158. 

Cartwright,  George,  158. 

Catholic  Cadet  Corps,  the,  159,  353. 

Cattle-raising  in  Labrador  unsuccess- 
ful, 290. 

Cawardine,  Miss,  nurse,  126. 

Charity,  prophylactic,  more  impor- 
tant than  remedial,  235. 

Cheever,  Colonel  David,  389. 

Chester,  England,  birthplace  of  Gren- 
fell,  1,  2. 

Chidley,  Cape,  Labrador,  164,  207, 
208. 

Children's  Home,  the,  244-253. 

Church  Lads  Brigade,  the,  159,  353. 

Clark,  Sir  Andrew,  doctor,  65. 

Cluett,  George  B.,  of  Troy,  N.Y.,  347, 
348. 

Cook.  Captain,  128.  340,  341. 

Cooperative  system,  the,  215-225. 

Corner,  the,  magazine,  242. 

Crookhaven,  seat  of  a  dispensary  and 
social  centre,  107. 

Crowe,  Harry,  lumber  operator,  370. 

Curtis,  Dr.  Charles,  408. 

Curtis,  Lieutenant  Roger,  quoted, 
158. 

Curwen.  Dr.  Elliott,  126. 

Curzon-Howe,  Lady,  191. 

Curzon-Howe,  Lord,  191. 

Cutter,  Marion,  librarian,  266. 

Daly,  Professor  Reginald,  head  of  De- 
partment of  Geology  at  Harvard 
University,  quoted,  157, 158. 

Dampier,  William,  191. 

Davis  Inlet,  Labrador,  154,  155. 

Dawson,  Sir  Betrand,  388. 

Dee,  the  River,  2,  4. 

Delano,  Eugene,  head  of  Brown 
Brothers,  bankers,  358. 

Denominationalism,  evils  of,  264,  269, 
353. 

Dogs,  Labrador,  ferocity  of,  198,  289. 
290. 

Domino  Run,  Labrador,  natural  har- 
bour, 120. 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  191. 


438 


INDEX 


Duke  of  Connaught,  Governor-Gen- 
eral of  Canada,  382. 

Durand,  Mrs.  Charles,  aunt  of  Mrs. 
Grenfell,  336. 

Education  in  Labrador:  schools  de- 
nominational, 254,  269;  Grenf ell's 
school,  257-264;  moving  libraries, 
266;  founding  of  imdenominational 
boarding  school,  268. 

Edward  VII,  King,  Grenfell's  private 
audience  with,  284,  285. 

Edwards,  Antiguan  lecturer  of  the 
Christian  Evidence  Society,  82,  84, 
85. 

Emily  Beaver  Chamberlain  Memorial 
Hospital,  404. 

English,  Robert,  of  Yale  College,  277, 
278. 

Eskimos,  the,  Grenfell's  work  with, 
129-136;  original  natives  of  Labra- 
dor, 140,  141;  Valentine,  king  of, 
155;  suffering  of,  155. 

Evans,  John,  worker  at  St.  Anthony, 
405. 

Fallon,  Dr.  Louis,  405. 

Faroe  Islands,  the,  184. 

Fenwick,  Harry,  69. 

"Fisher  Lads'  Letter- Writing  Asso- 
ciation," 97. 

Fishermen's  Institute,  183. 

Ford,  George,  factor  of  Hudson  Bay 
Company,  141,  155,  242,  277,  327. 

Fox  Farm,  at  St.  Anthony,  238-240. 

George  V,  King,  352,  353. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  106. 

Gosling,  Mrs.  W.  E.,  370. 

Gould,    Albert,    volunteer    helper    of 

Grenfell,  318,  321. 
Great  Cop,  the,  4. 
Greenshields,  Julia,  editor  of  Among 

the  Deep-Sea  Fishers,  280. 
Grenfell,  Algernon,  brother  of  W.  T. 

G.,  7,  8,  9,  10. 
Grenfell,  Algernon   Sydney,  father  of 

W.  T.  G.,  8,  9,  11,  12. 
Grenfell,  Cecil,  brother  of  W.  T.  G.,  7. 
Grenfell,  Kinloch  Pascoe,  son  of  W.  T. 

G.,  342. 
Grenfell,  Maurice,  brother  of  W.  T.  G., 

7. 
Grenfell,  Pascoe,  of  Bank  of  England, 

161. 


Grenfell,  Rosamond  Loveday,  daugh- 
ter of  W.  T.  G.,  342. 

Grenfell,  Wilfred  Thomason,  birth,  1; 
ancestry,  1,  2;  early  days,  2-14; 
school  life,  15-36;  study  of  natural 
objects,  34-36;  choice  of  medical 
profession,  37-39;  college  life,  41-44; 
interest  in  athletics,  44;  religious 
awakening,  44-46;  Sunday-school 
class  and  slum  work,  46-53;  summer 
cruises,  53-57;  camping  with  boys, 
57-63;  germination  of  democratic 
tendencies,  63;  interne  in  London 
Hospital,  64-87;  father's  death,  73; 
humanitarian  ideals,  78,  79;  hatred 
of  liquor  trafBc,  79;  association  with 
religious  radicals  in  East  London,  81- 
86;  cosmopolitan  life,  85;  member 
of  College  of  Physicians  and  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  of  England,  87; 
first  work  in  fisheries  of  North  Sea, 
88-98;  his  religion  intensely  social, 
99-101;  medical  officer  in  boys' 
summer-camps,  102,  103;  develop- 
ment of  work  in  North  Sea  and  off 
Irish  coast,  104-114;  preparation 
and  departure  for  America,  113-118; 
first  summer  in  Labrador,  119-125; 
success  in  Labrador,  125;  return  to 
England,  126;  second  voyage  to 
Labrador,  126;  founding  of  cottage 
hospitals,  126;  visits  to  Moravian 
Brethren  and  work  among  Eskimos, 
128-138;  lectiuing  and  soliciting  in 
southern  Ne^^^oundland  and  Can- 
ada, 159-162;  cruising  north,  163- 
170;  experience  with  seal  fishery, 
173-182;  trip  to  Iceland,  183-187; 
holiday  with  Treves  on  Scilly  Is- 
lands, 187,  188;  third  voyage  to 
Newfoimdland,  192,  193;  requested 
to  establish  a  winter  station  at  St. 
Anthony,  194;  winter  at  St.  An- 
thony, 197-214;  institution  of  coop- 
erative system,  218-225;  institution 
of  saw-mill  in  North  Newfoundland, 
226-238;  fox  farm  at  St.  Anthony, 
238,  239;  founding  of  The  Children's 
Home,  244;  founding  of  common 
school,  257-265;  moving  libraries, 
266;  arrangement  of  two-cent  postal 
rate,  281,  282;  awarded  honorary 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Medicine  of 
Oxford,  282;  received  honorary  de- 
gree of  Doctor  of  Laws  in  America, 


INDEX 


439 


'  283;  received  Companionship  in  the 
Order  of  St.  Michael  and  St.  George, 
284;  reindeer  experiment,  288-303; 
propaganda  lecturing  in  England, 
331,  332;  courtship,  333-337;  en- 
largement of  St.  Anthony  Hospital, 
338,  339;  marriage  and  family,  342, 
343;  assumption  of  cooperative 
store  debt,  344-347;  founding  of 
Institute  at  St.  John's,  349-353; 
lecture  tour  in  U.S.  and  England, 
357-361;  lecture  tour  again,  371- 
374;  holiday  in  Asia  Minor,  376- 
382;  winter  at  base  hospital  in 
France  (1915),  384-402;  attacked 
by  a  St.  John's  newspaper,  403; 
growth  and  development  of  Mission, 
404-410;  religious  life,  424-434. 

Grenfell,  Wilfred  Thomason,  Jr., 
342. 

Grenfell  Association  of  America,  the, 
280. 

Grenfell  Town,  161. 

Grieve,  Dr.  John,  404. 

Haldane,  Lord,  256. 

Halifax,  visited  by  Grenfell,  159. 

Hare,  Dr.  Mather,  work  at  Harring- 
ton, 275-276,  409. 

Harrington  Hospital,  Canadian  Lab- 
rador, 418. 

Hause,  Mr.,  of  Pratt  Institute,  vol- 
unteer student  helper,  325. 

Hearn  longliners  and  trawlers,  183. 

Heligoland,  visited  by  Grenfell,  90. 

Henley,  or  Chateau,  Labrador,  168. 

Henson,  Dr.  Hensley,  Bishop  of  Here- 
ford, 83,  84. 

Home,  the  Children's,  244-253. 

Hopedale,  Labrador,  128,  131. 

Horsley,  Sir  Victor,  doctor,  72. 

Hot-heads,  launches  used  in  open  sea, 
275-279. 

Hudson  Bay  Company,  the,  133,  216, 
276,  376. 

Huxley,  Professor,  his  criticism  of  Eng- 
lish public  school  teaching,  40. 

Hyeres,  France,  24. 

Iceland,  183-187. 

Illiteracy,  in  Newfoundland  and  Lab- 
rador, 255. 

Indian  Harbour,  site  of  one  of  Gren- 
fell's  hospitals,  126. 

Indian   Tickle,   Labrador,   site   of   a 


church  built  by  Labrador  Mission, 

165. 
Ingram,  Rt.  Rev.  A.  F.  Winnington, 

Bishop  of  London,  83,  84. 
International     Grenfell     Association 

the,  formation  of,  358-359. 
Ireland,  Archbishop,  268. 
Irish  Poor-Relief  Board,  109. 
Irving,  Sir  Henry,  80. 

Jackson,  R«v.  Dr.  Sheldon,  Presby- 
terian missionary  in  Alaska,  290. 

Job,  the  Honourable  W.  C,  403. 

Job,  Mrs.  W.  C,  370. 

Jones,  Rev.  Dr.  Edgar,  268. 

Jones,  Sir  Robert,  orthopedic  surgeon, 
359,  360,  385,  388. 

Jones,  Mr.  Walter,  manager  of  Insti- 
tute at  St.  John's,  367. 

Julia  Sheriden,  the,  Mission  steamer, 
193,  196. 

Kean,  Captain,  of  the  S.S.  Wolf,  180, 

181. 
Keese,  Ruth  (Mrs.  John  Mason  Little, 

Jr.),  405. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  2,  103,  187,  256. 
Komatik,  description  of  a,  202,  203. 

Labrador,  the  Country  and  the  People, 
139. 

Labrador,  inhabitants  of,  139,  140; 
climate  of,  140, 141;  fishing  industry, 
141,  142;  poverty  of  people,  142, 
148-153;  superstition  of  people,  142- 
145;  natural  characteristics  of,  156- 
158. 

Lake  Forest,  on  Lake  Michigan,  Mrs. 
Grenf ell's  home,  336. 

Lapps,  292-294. 

Leacock,  Stephen,  his  essay.  How  to 
Become  a  Doctor,  144,  145. 

Leslie,  Olive,  kindergartner,  260. 

Lewis  Bay,  Labrador,  winter  hospital 
station  at,  404. 

Lighthouses,  at  Battle  Harbour,  273; 
at  White  Point,  274;  at  Indian  Har- 
bour, 274. 

Liquor  traffic,  the,  Grenfell's  hatred 
of,  79;  his  suppression  of,  at  St. 
Anthony,  209-214;  at  St.  John's, 
353-356. 

Lister,  Sir  Joseph,  70. 

Little,  Dr.  John  Mason,  338,  404,  406, 
417. 


440 


INDEX 


Lloyd,  Dr.,  Prime  Minister  of  New- 
foundland,  382. 

Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  430,  431. 

London  Hospital  and  University, 
Grenf ell's  father  chaplain  of,  37; 
Grenfell's  alma  mater,  39. 

Loti,  Pierre,  186. 

Luther,  Jessie,  422, 

MacAusland,  Dr.  W.  R.,  of  Boston, 
381. 

MacClanahan,  Anna  Elizabeth  Cald- 
well (Mrs.  W.  T.  Grenfell),  336. 

MacClanahan,  Colonel,  father-in-law 
of  Grenfell,  336. 

MacGregor,  Sir  William,  Governor  of 
Newfoundland,  291,  320-323. 

Mackenzie,  Sir  Stephen,  66. 

Marlborough  School,  15-24,  27,  30-33. 

Marquis  of  Ripon,  Minister  to  the 
Colonies,  286. 

Mason,  A.  E.  W.,  novelist,  187. 

Matheson,  Paul,  volunteer  helper  of 
Grenfell,  318. 

McCook,  Colonel  Anson  G.,  281,  282. 

McGrath,  Sir  Patrick,  382. 

Methodist  guards,  the,  159,  353. 

Meyer,  Hon.  George  von  L.,  Post- 
master-General, 281,  282. 

Mill,  the,  on  the  "French  Shore," 
Newfoundland,  226-238. 

Mission  to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen,  90. 

Montreal,  visited  by  Grenfell,  160, 161. 

Moody,  Dwight  L.,  evangelist,  45,  427. 

Moravian  Brethren,  the,  their  work 
with  the  Eskimos,  128, 129, 130, 132, 
140,  156,  207. 

Moravian  Mission,  129-132. 

Muir,  Ethel  Gordon,  teacher,  267. 

Murchison  Prize,  awarded  Grenfell  by 
the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  in 
1911,  323. 

Nain,  Labrador,  130,  132. 

Nakvak,  Labrador,  141;  remains  of 
Tunits  there,  155. 

Napatuliarasok  Island,  Labrador,  no- 
ted for  its  Labradorite,  156. 

Nasson  Institute,  264. 

Needlework  Guild  of  America,  the,  251, 
419. 

Newfoundland,  independent  colony 
of  England,  139;  Labrador  owned 
by,  139;  difference  between  North 
and  South  Newfoundland,  250. 


Nielsen,  Adolph,  Superintendent  of 
Fisheries  off  Labrador,  117. 

O'Brien,  Sir  Terence,  governor  at  St. 
John's,  117,  171. 

Paddon,  Dr.  and  Mrs.,  404,  405. 
Parkhurst,  Dr.  Charles  H.,  of  New 

York,  280. 
Peary,  Admiral,  return  of  from  North 

Pole,  339-342. 
Pomiuk,  Prince,  Eskimo,  241-243. 
Pratt  Institute,  256,  258,  264. 
Presbyterian  Highland  Brigade,  the, 

353. 
Prince  Edward  Island,  240. 
Princess    May,    the     midget    steam 

launch,  127,  128. 
Public  School  Camps,  101. 

R.A.M.C,    efficiency   of   in   France, 

398-400. 
Raymond,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  430,  431. 
Red  Bay,  Labrador,  218. 
Red  Bay  Cooperative  Store,  219. 
Reed,    William   Howell,    of   Boston, 

292. 
Reikyavik,  capital  of  Iceland,  184. 
Reindeer  experiment,  the,  290-303. 
Ripon,  Marquis  of,  159. 
Rivington,  Sir  Walter,  surgeon,  70. 
Roddick,  Sir  Thomas,  162. 
Roosevelt,  the,  Peary's  ship,  340,  341, 
Rowland,  John,  of  Yale  College,  277, 

278. 

St.  Anthony,  Newfoundland,  141; 
poverty  of  people,  194,  195;  Gren- 
fell's first  winter  in,  197-214;  Gren- 
fell's fight  against  liquor  traffic,  209- 
214;  headquarters  of  hospital  sta- 
tions, 417. 

St.  John's,  burning  of,  115,  116;  seat 
of  Newfoundland  government,  139. 

Sands  of  Dee,  the,  1-7. 

Sayre,  Francis  B.,  secretary  of  Gren- 
fell, 250,  338,  339,  341,  342,  374, 
375. 

Scilly  Islands,  187. 

Seal  Fishery,  the,  172-182. 

Seyde  Fjord,  Iceland,  visited  by 
Grenfell,  186,  187. 

Sheard,  Mr.,  404. 

Sir  Donald,  the,  mission  steamer,  161, 
190,  191,  208. 


INDEX 


441 


Skiff,  Captain,  183. 

Slogget,  Sir  Arthur,  general,  385,  398, 

399. 
Smith.  George  Adam,  quoted,  429. 
Southborough,    Lord    (Mr.    Francis 

Hopwood),  113. 
Spalding,   Katie,   of   The   Children's 

Home,  251,  253. 
Spencer,  Martyn,  290,  370. 
Stewart,  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Norman,  405. 
Stirling,  W.  R.,  333,  337,  348,  407. 
Storr,    Eleanor,    of    The    Children's 

Home,  250,  253. 
Strathcona,    Lord    (Donald    Smith), 

patron  of  Labrador  Mission,   160, 

161;  donor  of  the  Strathcona,  191, 

376.  _ 

Studd,  J.  E.  and  C.  T.,  45. 
Sutton,  Dr.,  London  Hospital,  69. 

Terschelling,  visited  by  Grenfell,  90. 

Tickle,  the  Grenfell,  209. 

Tigris,  the  S.S.,  of  the  Polaris  ex- 
pedition, 178. 

Tilt  Cove,  Newfoundland,  192,  193. 

Toilers  of  the  Deep,  The,  magazine, 
280. 

Tralee,  on  Kerry  coast,  seat  of  a  dis- 
pensary, 107. 

Treves,  Sir  Frederick,  lecturer  in 
anatomy  and  surgery  in  London 
Hospital  and  University,  43,  67-69, 
88,  187,  254,  285,  388;  The  Cradle  of 
the  Deep,  187. 

Trevize,  skipper,  114. 

Truck  Acts,  96. 


Ungava  Bay,  Labrador,  164,  208. 

Van  Dyke,  Dr.  Henry,  362. 
Vestmann  Islands,  Iceland,  visited  by 

Grenfell,  184. 
Victoria,  Queen,  104. 
Victoria  Park,  London,  81-82. 

Wakefield,  Dr.  Arthur,  of  England, 

368,  369. 
Wall  Street  Journal,  quoted,  294,  295. 
Watson,  the  Honourable  Robert,  403. 
Wellmgton,  Duke  of,  187. 
West,  Dr.,  275,  409. 
White,  Emma  E.,  secretary  of  Labra- 
dor Mission  in  Boston,  279,  324. 
White  Bay,  Labrador,  148. 
Whitechapel   Road,   site  of   London 

Hospital,  40. 
Whitney,  Harry,  340. 
Williams,  Miss,  nurse,  126. 
Williams,  George,  364,  365. 
Williams,    Sir    Ralph,    governor    of 

Newfoundland,  350-352. 
Willway,  Dr.,  colleague  of  Grenfell, 

169. 
Wilson,  Jessie,  daughter  of  President 

Wilson,  374,  375. 
Wiltsie,  Dr.,  his  work  in  Labrador, 

363   364. 
Wolf, 'the  S.S.,  wreck  of,  180,  181. 


Yarmouth,  institute  for  fishermen 
ashore,  and  dispensary  vessel,  105. 

Y.M.C.A.  in  St.  John's,  353;  m  France, 
389,  390. 


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